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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Applications Analyst

💰 $70,000 - $110,000

ITApplicationsBusiness SystemsSupportAnalysis

🎯 Role Definition

The Applications Analyst is a technical-business hybrid responsible for the ongoing support, configuration, integration, and improvement of enterprise applications (ERP, CRM, SaaS, and custom solutions). This role serves as the primary liaison between business stakeholders, IT teams, and third-party vendors to ensure applications meet business requirements, maintain high availability and performance, and evolve through controlled releases. Core responsibilities include incident and problem management, root cause analysis, application configuration, SQL-based troubleshooting, executing and coordinating UAT, and onboarding users with training and documentation. The ideal candidate combines strong analytical and SQL skills with ITIL-based incident/change experience, excellent stakeholder communication, and a continuous-improvement mindset.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Applications Analyst / Application Support Technician
  • Help Desk / Service Desk Technician with application exposure
  • Business Systems Analyst / Junior Business Analyst

Advancement To:

  • Senior Applications Analyst / Lead Applications Analyst
  • Application Support Manager / Application Owner
  • Solutions Architect / Technical Product Owner
  • IT Manager or Director of Application Services

Lateral Moves:

  • Business Systems Analyst
  • Integration Specialist / API Developer
  • Product Analyst / Business Process Analyst

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Provide day-to-day application support for enterprise systems (ERP, CRM, HRIS, custom web apps) by diagnosing incidents, restoring service, and communicating status to stakeholders while meeting SLA targets.
  • Triage and resolve Level 2 application incidents and escalations using structured incident management processes (ITIL), performing root cause analysis and documenting findings and workarounds.
  • Execute configuration and parameter management tasks in production and non-production environments to align applications with evolving business processes and policy requirements.
  • Author, validate, and run SQL queries and scripts to investigate data issues, extract business reports, support reconciliation tasks, and implement corrective data patches with careful rollback planning.
  • Coordinate and manage application releases and patches, including release notes, migration plans, rollback strategies, and cross-team cutover activities to minimize business disruption.
  • Lead or participate in business-facing User Acceptance Testing (UAT) cycles by creating test plans, test cases, documenting defects, and validating fixes prior to production deployment.
  • Build and maintain integrations between applications using REST/SOAP APIs, middleware (e.g., Dell Boomi, MuleSoft), ETL tools, or scheduled data exports/imports while ensuring data integrity and performance.
  • Develop, update, and maintain technical and end-user documentation: runbooks, support procedures, configuration guides, and knowledge base articles to improve support efficiency and onboarding.
  • Manage configuration and access control tasks including provisioning, role-based access reviews, segregation of duties (SoD) checks, and application-level security settings.
  • Partner with business analysts and process owners to gather requirements, analyze gaps, propose solution options, and translate business needs into technical specifications or configuration changes.
  • Create operational dashboards and scheduled reports (Power BI, Tableau, SSRS) to monitor application health, usage metrics, SLAs, and business-critical KPIs for stakeholders.
  • Conduct performance monitoring and capacity planning activities for supported applications, identifying bottlenecks, optimizing queries, and recommending infrastructure or application-level improvements.
  • Drive continuous improvement initiatives by identifying recurring incidents and inefficiencies, proposing permanent fixes, and implementing automations to reduce manual effort and MTTR.
  • Serve as primary contact for third-party vendors for application support, coordinating vendor troubleshooting, patching, and contracted maintenance while tracking vendor SLAs and costs.
  • Facilitate cross-functional change control, submitting and reviewing change tickets, risk assessments, backout plans, and ensuring compliance with governance and audit requirements.
  • Provide training, workshops, and onboarding sessions for business users on application functionality, workflow changes, and reporting capabilities to maximize adoption and correct usage.
  • Maintain and sanitize test and training environments, coordinate refreshes from production data where appropriate, and ensure data masking and compliance during environment refreshes.
  • Implement and enforce data quality, reconciliation, and validation routines to ensure transactional and master data consistency across systems and integrations.
  • Support disaster recovery and business continuity activities by maintaining runbooks, participating in DR tests, and ensuring application recovery objectives (RTO/RPO) are met.
  • Analyze and prioritize backlog items with product owners and stakeholders, estimate effort, and participate in sprint planning and agile delivery for application enhancements.
  • Monitor and enforce compliance with corporate policies, regulatory requirements (e.g., SOX, GDPR), and industry security standards as they relate to applications and data handling.
  • Produce and present regular status updates, post-implementation reviews, and metrics-driven reports to IT leadership and business stakeholders to drive transparency and accountability.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist with procurement evaluation, licensing renewals, and vendor contract review for application-related services.
  • Participate in cross-functional process improvement workshops (Kaizen, Lean) to align applications with streamlined business processes.
  • Support audit requests by gathering evidence, documenting processes, and implementing remediation items as required.
  • Coach and mentor junior analysts and coordinate shift handovers for follow-the-sun or extended coverage models.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Application support and troubleshooting for enterprise systems (ERP/CRM/HCM) — demonstrated production support experience.
  • Proficient SQL (T-SQL, PL/SQL) for querying, debugging, data reconciliation, and developing scripts to remediate data issues.
  • Experience with application configuration, parameterization, workflows, and user-role administration in commercial SaaS or on-prem platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Dynamics, Workday, Oracle EBS).
  • Knowledge of integration technologies and APIs (REST, SOAP, JSON, XML) and experience working with middleware/ETL platforms (Dell Boomi, MuleSoft, Informatica) or batch integrations.
  • Understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC), release management, version control (Git), and automated deployment pipelines.
  • Familiarity with monitoring and observability tools (Splunk, New Relic, Datadog, AppDynamics) for application performance and log analysis.
  • Hands-on experience with incident, problem, and change management frameworks (ITIL), including ticketing systems (ServiceNow, JIRA, Remedy).
  • Experience creating reports and dashboards using Power BI, Tableau, SSRS, or similar BI tools.
  • Scripting proficiency in a language such as Python, PowerShell, or Bash for automation, data manipulation, and scheduled maintenance tasks.
  • Strong understanding of application security best practices, access control, SSO, OAuth, and encryption technologies.
  • Hands-on experience with UAT planning/execution, test case creation, defect tracking, and test environment management.
  • Knowledge of database systems (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL) and basic DBA collaboration for query optimization and maintenance tasks.
  • Familiarity with regulatory and compliance requirements relevant to applications (SOX, GDPR, HIPAA) and evidence preparation for audits.

Soft Skills

  • Excellent verbal and written communication tailored to technical and non-technical audiences; able to present issue impact and resolution plans clearly.
  • Strong stakeholder management and customer-service focus; able to negotiate priorities and keep business partners informed under pressure.
  • Analytical and structured problem-solving skills for effective root cause analysis and permanent remediation planning.
  • Prioritization and time-management skills to manage competing incidents, projects, and enhancements while meeting SLAs.
  • Collaborative team player with experience working in cross-functional, matrixed environments and coordinating with product managers, developers, and vendors.
  • Attention to detail and documentation rigor to maintain runbooks, audit trails, and configuration records.
  • Adaptability and continuous-learning mindset to stay current with platform updates, new integrations, and evolving business needs.
  • Resilience under pressure and ability to lead incident response during production outages.
  • Facilitation and training skills for conducting workshops, UAT sessions, and end-user training.
  • Initiative and ownership mindset — drives issues to closure and proactively suggests improvements.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field — or equivalent professional experience in application support or business systems.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a technical or business field plus relevant professional certifications such as ITIL Foundation, Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), PMP, or platform-specific certifications (Salesforce Administrator, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Management Information Systems (MIS)
  • Information Technology
  • Business Administration
  • Software Engineering
  • Data Analytics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–5 years of hands-on application support, business systems analysis, or technical support within an enterprise environment.

Preferred: 3–7 years of progressive experience supporting enterprise applications (ERP/CRM/HCM), demonstrated experience with SQL, integrations, incident/change management (ITIL), UAT management, and exposure to cloud/SaaS platforms. Prior experience in regulated industries (finance, healthcare, or public sector) is a plus.

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