Senior Business Analyst at Connected Places Catapult – Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

Connected Places Catapult is the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities, transport, and places. We provide impartial innovation related services for public bodies, businesses, and infrastructure providers to catalyse step-change improvements in the way people live, work and travel. We connect businesses and public sector leaders to cutting-edge research to spark innovation and grow new markets. We run technology demonstrators and SME accelerators to scale new solutions that drive growth, spread prosperity and eliminate carbon.

The role will require you to lead our input into a range of different innovative projects working across government, academia and industry, in particular with start-ups.  You will have significant understanding of market dynamics and a track record of producing actionable exploitation plans and leading the commercialisation of new technological and service developments.  You will lead the production of market investigations to identify market and business needs and quantify market opportunities, generating the strategic analysis to support the develop of value propositions, business models and route-to-market strategies that meet market requirements and maximise market opportunities.

You will be required to input into all stages of projects, from leading the production of winning bids and technical proposals to leading the delivery of projects.  Working with CPC partners, particularly  Small or Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) and Start-Ups, to guide business model evaluation and innovation, advising on the feasibility, desirability and viability of their business models.

It is important to note that this role is externally focussed on supporting the Business Model and Market Analysis of CPC clients. Whilst there maybe elements of certain projects where your advisories may touch on Data Analysis or Programme Development, these are not the primary focus.

Key Responsibilities

You will:

• Provide technical guidance to members of project and bid teams, designing work packages and building collaborative relationships across the company through supporting the development of methodologies for discovery of actionable business insights
• Engage with SMEs to identify and understand their offering, knowledge gaps and business support requirements including leading the design of business support packages, which would be delivered to SMEs participating in programmes such as CPC accelerators – supporting through the development of workshop material, facilitating and conducting 121 business advisory sessions
• Understand project requirements, coordinate resources and lead the projects you are involved in, ensuring the delivery of high-quality outputs in a timely manner.
• Provide technical assurance of input that the team is providing into bids, proposals and projects and the outputs that they are generating.
• Provide support and guidance to junior members of the team, helping them to develop their technical skills and experience.
• Act as a specialist and ‘go-to’ person within CPC for business modelling and market appraisal.
• Lead the delivery of tailored, business support packages for SMEs, around their specific needs in topic areas such as market sizing, value proposition development, financial forecasting and investment strategy, among others.
• Produce high quality market research, including market size forecasts, competitive (market share) information and strategic recommendations.
• Collect, understand, and transmit the business requirements for projects, and translate these into functional specifications.
• Develop and validate value propositions and business models for new technologies, products and services.
• Formulate roadmaps and go to market strategies to overcome market barriers and maximise market benefits.
• You may be required to undertake any other reasonable duties to support the Catapult in achieving its strategic outcomes and ensure effective business operations.

• Highly experienced Business consultant, Business Analysist or Strategist with a track record of taking new and/or innovative products from concept to successful commercialisation.
• Demonstrate enthusiasm in a project-based environment.
• Relevant degree qualification or equivalent proven ability.
• Significant experience of working in a commercial or business led environment, whether employed or self-employed, in large or small firms. Having a mixed background is a plus.
• Thorough understanding of research methodologies and/or strategic analysis.
• Strong analytical skills with sound understanding of and passion for undertaking research.
• Ability to forge close working relationships with customers and stakeholders.
• Have a commercial acumen and analytical mind.
• Demonstrable experience of methods and techniques for capturing and defining business requirements including market analysis and business insight to support commercial decisions such as developing value propositions, designing business models and Business Cases.
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment as well as individually
• Ability to produce high quality written reports and presentations crafting stories rather than show-casing data.

Desirable:

• Further relevant MA/MSc/PhD qualifications with a business focus.
• Membership of a relevant professional institution.
• Familiarity with the technology industry and in particular high growth potential start-ups.
• Experience of undertaking financial/P&L analysis may be useful for this role.
• Data analysis and/or visualisation experience using PowerBI or other similar tools is also desirable (but not essential) for this role.