Technical Specialist

Job Description: Responsibilities: IT Financial Planning and Analysis provides internal financial reporting, partners with client Service. Delivery Team in the development of rates for the internal service fund and executes billing and invoicing activities. This section has an outward-facing posture frequently working with other client divisions, senior leadership team members, and users of internal reporting. The section is led by the Director of Financial Planning and Analysis and includes a mix of managers and associates with strong financial reporting and revenue-related skill sets. The primary responsibility of the Systems Applications Analyst II is to support the provisioning and billing areas of the client. client billing areas include both Telecomm Services (TS) and Computing Services (CS). This position will interface with other client organizations, vendors, and customers to ensure that all billing processes address the needs of those groups. The incumbent will assist in the analysis of business processes used in the client billing operation and aid in documenting all current and new operational procedures within the billing process. The incumbent will participate in resolving customer issues dealing with billing and generating reports as requested by management or customers. The position will perform administrative duties as required to maintain the current billing application which will include analysis or programming to ensure resolution of business issues that may occur. The incumbent will assist in project management activities when necessary. The position requires extensive knowledge of telecommunications billing and computing services billing and necessitates accurate documentation and precise record keeping. Through detailed record keeping, the incumbent will ensure that accounting records are maintained constantly up to date. The incumbent must have the ability to communicate with non-technical clients and users of client services who have no understanding of the applications that they are using or of the services that they are being invoiced. The position requires monitoring of all incoming ServiceNow tickets to ensure timely assignment and resolution. Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities: Thorough knowledge of providing system administration duties, system analysis, and. Thorough knowledge of specific computer environments and a broad range of programming and development languages with the ability to learn emerging programming languages. Knowledge and ability to devise or modify procedures to solve complex problems considering computer equipment capacity and limitations. Extensive knowledge to serve as a technical resource in solving problems of high complexity. bility to plan and manage the integration and implementation of new technology, solving highly technical and complex problems while guiding and providing direction for projects through completion. bility to lead applications related to complex projects involving multiple staff across specialty areas. bility to independently manage project timelines, resources, and staff and lead implementation efforts. Understands the market, industry, and competitors that have an impact on the customer's business. Strong communication skills to interact with operations team members, production, support, implementation, infrastructure, and development teams. bility to develop long-range strategic alternatives and build client support for the organizations objectives. Education and Experience: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, Computer Engineering, Math, or Engineering or related technical degree from an appropriately accredited institution and two years of experience in business application consulting or development; or Bachelor's degree with some computer coursework from an appropriately accredited institution and three years of experience in business applications consulting or development; or ssociate degree in computer programming from an appropriately accredited institution and three years of experience in application consulting or development; or an equivalent combination of education and experience. 50% - Administration of client billing system: Maintain NetPlus billing application to include customer account information, billing rates, item codes, client assets, and vendor information. Develop analysis programs and procedures, using tools such as SAS and Pentaho, to evaluate and ensure the correctness and completeness of all currently used vendor source data. Identify, evaluate, and catalog all currently unused vendor billing data sources for potential future use to improve system automation. Monitor system activity daily to understand the pattern of normal business, detect and handle unusual exceptions in the usage of the services at client, and relay this information to the service area affected to be addressed or eliminated as a potential problem. ssess the current state of the application, identifying aspects that could enhance or improve the overall billing operational performance. Recommend changes to facilitate those improvements considering long-term positive changes as well as short-term problem-solving. This will involve the examination of system operations, telecom, shared services business functions, and the related NetPlus business rules and system processes within the client. Perform daily reviews of the application billing data for correctness and completeness. Provide input to and obtain feedback from Service Engineers, Analysts, and Service Owners regarding process changes and their effect on billing. Perform validation stemming from changes in the billing process and vendor billing data. Keep detailed records of the applications performance and shortcomings. Provide recommendations for possible improvement(s) for senior-level staff to review and analyze. Receive/Retrieve vendor billing data and execute month-end processing of billing data through generation of invoices to customers. 30% - Support Customer inquiry/request tracking and resolution: Provide Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Service Request Management, and customer consultation for the NetPlus enterprise billing system. ssess customer problems completely so that areas of concern can be identified, and remedial results attained. Escalate and communicate customer issues to management. Work with the management team to prioritize suggested changes to each business segment Maintain current reports within NetPlus and build new reports using Pentaho. Generate easy-to-interpret reports based on collected data. 10% - Administration of SAS and IBM IZPCA Mainframe Enterprise Applications: Monitor and support functions for SAS 9.4 and IBM IZPCA in both production and test environments. Support and maintain accounting modules of the IBM IZPCA application in production and test. Process all metric input log data for hundreds of applications as well as operating system log data. This daily process includes daily and monthly update programs, daily audit programs, daily database backup programs, daily reporting programs, weekly source code backup programs, and disaster recovery programs. Understand the proprietary of IBM, Computer Associates (CA), SAS, and MXG software packages and administer periodic scheduled maintenance, vendor correction fixes (hotfixes), and any client Enterprise computing changes that may occur which would impact any of the input log data or daily process and reporting of input data. Understand client major software component data input feeds on the z/OS mainframe platform which include CICS, DB2, IMS, RMF, SMF, TCP/IP. s well as other data feeds such as Direct Access Storage Data (DASD), MQSeries, SYSVIEW messaging data, and Tape Management System (TMS). nalyze and debug problems and implement changes. Provide analytical research resulting in internal and external billing inquiry reports. Present reports using Microsoft Windows applications such as MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Adobe Acrobat, and WinSCP file transfer. Develop programs to generate reports for IZPCA using Cognos Analytics.