Business Analyst II at American Greetings in Westlake, OH

Because this position requires regular on-site work at our Creative Studios in Westlake, Ohio, we will focus on candidates who currently reside in Northeast Ohio.

Remote work and relocation assistance are NOT available for this role.

The Business Analyst II partners with business stakeholders and technology teams to understand business objectives, analyze problems and opportunities, and translate business needs into clear, actionable requirements and solution recommendations. The role applies strong business acumen, analytical thinking, and knowledge of processes, data, and technology to improve efficiency and deliver measurable business value. Working independently on small to medium initiatives and defined workstreams of larger efforts, the Business Analyst II leads requirements and process analysis; supports solution design, testing, implementation, and change adoption; and uses modern analytics, automation, and approved AI-enabled tools responsibly to improve the quality and speed of delivery.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:
• Builds strong stakeholder relationships and applies business acumen to understand strategy, operating models, processes, customers, financial drivers, risks, and performance measures; evaluates requests and solution options based on feasibility, tradeoffs, and business value.
• Elicits, analyzes, validates, prioritizes, and documents business, functional, non-functional, and data requirements using appropriate techniques; produces clear, testable, traceable artifacts such as user stories, acceptance criteria, use cases, process flows, and decision rules.
• Facilitates alignment among business and technical stakeholders by clarifying scope, assumptions, dependencies, constraints, risks, priorities, and expected outcomes, and translates business needs into viable solution direction.
• Analyzes current-state processes and root causes to identify bottlenecks, handoffs, rework, controls, and waste; designs future-state improvements through simplification, standardization, automation, reuse, or technology enablement and helps define measures of realized value.
• Identifies and analyzes business data needs, definitions, sources, quality considerations, reporting, and analytics requirements; uses data to support decisions and validate problems, requirements, and outcomes.
• Uses modern collaboration, requirements, process-modeling, analytics, automation, and approved AI-enabled tools to accelerate research, synthesis, documentation, analysis, and test development; validates AI-generated outputs and follows company requirements for privacy, security, intellectual property, accuracy, and responsible AI use.
• Partners with product, project, architecture, development, data, vendor, and other delivery teams to estimate analysis effort, assess impacts, manage dependencies, and support solution design and delivery.
• Plans and supports functional, system, integration, regression, and user acceptance testing, including test scenarios/scripts, expected results, requirements traceability, defect analysis, and resolution support.
• Supports implementation readiness, organizational change, training/documentation, adoption, and post-implementation validation as appropriate; investigates business or production issues and helps define sustainable corrective actions.
• Independently leads analysis for small to medium initiatives and defined workstreams of larger initiatives.
• Manages multiple priorities across several initiatives, engages team members and escalates material risks and decisions appropriately.
• Works effectively across Agile, iterative, predictive/waterfall, and hybrid delivery approaches, adapting analysis practices to the needs of the initiative.
• Develops working depth in one or more business domains, considers upstream and downstream impacts, seeks stakeholder feedback, and contributes to continuous improvement of Business Analysis practices and ways of working.

Required Length & Type of Experience:
• 3-5 years of progressive experience in business analysis, process analysis, product/project delivery, or a closely related role, including experience comparable to a Business Analyst I level.
• Demonstrated ability to independently lead requirements elicitation, analysis, documentation, validation, and stakeholder facilitation for small to medium initiatives or defined workstreams.
• Experience across the solution or product life cycle, including discovery, requirements, design collaboration, testing/UAT, implementation, and post-implementation support.
• Demonstrated experience analyzing business processes and implementing or recommending improvements that increase efficiency, quality, control, service, or business value.
• Experience with technology-enabled solutions such as custom or packaged applications, SaaS/cloud platforms, data/reporting, integrations, or automation.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities:
• Strong business acumen and analytical judgment, with the ability to connect strategy, processes, data, technology, costs, risks, and customer or operational outcomes and make evidence-based recommendations.
• Strong requirements elicitation, analysis, documentation, and process-improvement skills, including writing clear, testable, traceable requirements and acceptance criteria; current-state/future-state mapping; root-cause and gap analysis; and identifying simplification, standardization, automation, and efficiency opportunities.
• Strong facilitation, communication, active listening, negotiation, and stakeholder-management skills; able to communicate effectively with business and technical audiences and synthesize complex qualitative and quantitative information.
• Working knowledge of data concepts and analytical practices, with the ability to define data needs, interpret data, and use data to validate problems, requirements, and outcomes.
• Proficiency with contemporary productivity, collaboration, requirements, diagramming/process-modeling, analytics, and work-management tools used by the company.
• Practical proficiency with approved AI-enabled tools for business analysis, including effective prompting, output validation, protection of sensitive information, and adherence to responsible-use and governance standards.
• Understanding of testing and delivery practices, including test planning, requirements traceability, defect analysis, UAT support, and Agile, iterative, predictive/waterfall, and hybrid approaches.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities, work independently within defined scope, collaborate effectively across functions, and continuously identify better ways of working through process, automation, and emerging technology.

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Systems, Computer Science, Business Analytics, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.

Please ensure all information submitted in your application is complete and accurate. Verification of candidate information may be conducted during the hiring process. Candidates who provide false, misleading, or materially inaccurate information, including residence or location information, may be disqualified from consideration.