Lead Business Analyst

Company description

Publicis Sapient is a digital transformation partner helping established organizations get to their future, digitally enabled state, both in the way they work and the way they serve their customers. We help unlock value through a start-up mindset and modern methods, fusing strategy, consulting, and customer experience with agile engineering and problem-solving creativity. United by our core values and our purpose of helping people thrive in the brave pursuit of next, our 20,000+ people in 53 offices around the world combine experience across technology, data sciences, consulting, and customer obsession to accelerate our clients’ businesses through designing the products and services their customers truly value.

Overview

ROLE PURPOSE
Lead business analysis across the MOM portfolio and strengthen product management through portfolio governance, discovery, roadmap shaping, prioritization, value tracking, and consistent delivery standards.
The Lead Business Analyst is the senior analysis and portfolio governance partner to the MOM Product Manager. The role manages business analysis across Manufacturing Execution, Automation, Machine and Data Connectivity, and Manufacturing Intelligence, ensuring strategy is converted into a coherent roadmap, governed demand, clear solution scope, and measurable outcomes.
Unlike a delivery-focused Business Analyst, this role works across initiatives and sites. It sets analysis standards, challenges business value, manages cross-solution dependencies, guides Business Analysts, and creates decision material for product governance and leadership forums. It supports product management but does not replace product accountability or formal people management unless assigned.
ROLE MANDATE

• Lead portfolio-level discovery and translate C&S priorities into product opportunities, themes, and roadmap recommendations.
• Create consistent governance for demand intake, business cases, prioritization, requirements, decisions, and value realization.
• Coordinate BA work across MES, automation, connectivity, and manufacturing intelligence initiatives.
• Protect global standards while enabling justified site or process variation through clear exception governance.
• Provide the Product Manager with options, impacts, dependencies, risks, and recommendations for decisions.
• Build BA capability through coaching, quality reviews, reusable methods, and domain knowledge sharing.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Product Management Partnership

• Support product vision, portfolio goals, roadmap development, release themes, and outcome definition with the MOM Product Manager.
• Lead structured discovery to clarify problems, users, process impact, data needs, constraints, value, and solution options before commitment.
• Prepare prioritization evidence using value, strategic alignment, urgency, dependency, risk, cost, capacity, and readiness.
• Maintain portfolio views of demand, decisions, scope, assumptions, risks, dependencies, milestones, and expected benefits.
• Prepare concise content for portfolio reviews, SteerCo, investment decisions, and stakeholder alignment.

Portfolio Governance & Operating Model

• Design and run analysis governance from demand intake through discovery, delivery readiness, release, adoption, and value review.
• Define quality gates for business cases, process design, requirements, data, integration, architecture, security, testing, and operational readiness.
• Establish reusable templates, methods, definitions, traceability, and decision records across the portfolio.
• Coordinate standard and exception paths to prevent avoidable complexity or technical debt.
• Lead portfolio impact analysis and dependency management across systems, sites, vendors, and initiatives.

MOM Portfolio Leadership

• Provide senior analysis leadership across MES, machine automation, connectivity, manufacturing intelligence, and operational data integration.
• Guide end-to-end process and information design across MES, ERP, machines, SCADA, data platforms, analytics, maintenance, and quality.
• Ensure connectivity requirements address hardware, protocols, architecture, cybersecurity, data ownership, support, and monitoring.
• Shape manufacturing intelligence use cases around actionable decisions and measurable outcomes, not dashboards alone.
• Promote scalable templates, shared data definitions, and cross-site reuse while documenting justified local needs.

BA Practice Leadership

• Plan analysis coverage and recommend BA focus based on priorities, complexity, domain skill, and capacity.
• Coach BAs in discovery, process analysis, requirements, facilitation, data and integration analysis, testing, and communication.
• Review critical BA deliverables and provide quality assurance before approval.
• Build shared knowledge, lessons learned, capability plans, and communities of practice.
• Step into complex initiatives to resolve ambiguity, conflicting requirements, or alignment issues.

Stakeholder & Vendor Leadership

• Facilitate senior workshops across Manufacturing, Engineering, Quality, Maintenance, Supply Chain, IT/OT, Data, Architecture, Cybersecurity, Finance, and vendors.
• Challenge requested solutions constructively and reframe demand around business problems, outcomes, and standards.
• Clarify ownership, decision rights, responsibilities, and escalation paths.
• Support supplier evaluation, scope review, statement of work input, deliverable acceptance, and dependency control.
• Communicate complex topics in clear business language across sites and leadership levels.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's or master's degree in Engineering, Manufacturing, Information Technology, Computer Science, Data, Supply Chain, Business, or a related field.
• Typically 8+ years of relevant experience, including senior or lead responsibility in business analysis, product management support, manufacturing systems, smart factory, or digital transformation.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating complex initiatives across multiple functions, systems, vendors, or manu