Gemma Hawthorn
Timperley,Trafford
Summary
Experienced Business Analyst with over 15 years experience, skilled in team and stakeholder coordination and leadership. Builds rapport and constructive relationships to achieve project objectives. Engages cross-functional teams to achieve product function and performance improvements within deadlines.
Overview
17
17
years of professional experience
4
4
years of post-secondary education
1
1
Certification
Work History
Senior Business Analyst
PeppercornAI
Remote
06.2024 - Current
- From an analytical perspective, I played a key role in the integration of Peppercorn AI's conversational agent, Pipr, with Confused.com. This encompassed the onboarding of a new insurer and the technical integration with the Confused.com platform.
- Conducted comprehensive data mapping exercises between Peppercorn AI and critical third-party systems, including Confused.com, Allianz, ICE (policy administration), and PCL (payments provider), to facilitate end-to-end new business quoting, policy sign-up, and post-policy servicing capabilities.
- Managed the integration project across internal teams and with Allianz, conducting daily meetings to ensure adherence to timelines and facilitate successful sign-off and go-live.
- Executed end-to-end and regression testing of the integrated Confused.com and Pipr solution to verify compliance requirements and ensure the safety and appropriateness of the conversational experience.
- Proactively monitored the competitive AI landscape and recommended potential features to maintain our market competitiveness.
- Actively participated in monthly review calls with our third-party hosted policy administration system to address issues and plan the implementation of necessary upgrades.
- Consistently utilised Jira, Confluence, and Miro to document project requirements, process flows, and innovative concepts.
- Implemented Tempo Timesheets for the project team to ensure accurate time tracking for client billing on B2B projects.
Senior Business Analyst
Membr
Worsley, Salford
05.2019 - 05.2024
- Led the European and APAC rollout of a new online and in-club sign-up solution for Anytime Fitness, including payments integration and digital membership agreements. This project, piloted first, is now used by over 1500 clubs globally.
- Developed and delivered a migration tool for Anytime Fitness Japan, successfully transitioning approximately 500,000 members from legacy membership and payments software to Membr.
- Implemented a streamlined sign-up process and payment integration for the UK market. This involved in-depth user research with individual clubs to identify pain points and requirements. Additionally, I facilitated training for the UK success team and onboarded clubs transitioning to the new system. This solution is currently live in two UK locations with positive feedback.
- Worked on a new global sign-up solution with integrated payments. Currently targeting Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, this project involves ongoing collaboration with regional product managers to ensure alignment on requirements and features for a mid-2024 launch.
- Maintained close collaboration with the payments product owner, conducting daily check-ins to monitor requirements, grooming the backlog, plan for upcoming sprints and update on development progress.
- Used Jira and Confluence to track and document requirements and business rules
- Used the Scrum methodology for efficient project management. I facilitate daily standup meetings, weekly refinement sessions, and bi-weekly retrospective and planning sessions. I also create a sprint report including team velocity and details of features set to be released.
- Effectively managing a development team with members located in both the UK and India as well as cross collaboration with other development teams across the wider business.
- Provided valuable insights for the business roadmap, particularly significant after the Membr acquisition by Xplor in September 2023. This involves regular project updates as well as flagging any risks and issues that may impact on target release dates.
Senior Business Systems Analyst
Swinton Insurance
Manchester
07.2015 - 05.2019
- Supported the companies decision to outsource the core systems by providing complex extracts of customer data using SQL and creating RMJ jobs alongside the Operations team to automate these extracts.
- Worked alongside Swintons Data Protection Officer to determine GDPR rules for all databases containing customer data. Translated these rules into requirements for the development team to implement.
- Decommissioning of some of Swintons legacy systems including all call centre applications, customer facing quote and buy websites, customer document portals and aggregator web services.
- Rightsizing of the remaining legacy systems which includes proposals of server switch off and database relocation.
- BAU support of the remaining legacy systems including daily checks, incident management and root cause analysis as and when required
- Jira and Confluence Administration including adding and removing users, creating new boards and workflows and supporting new users.
Senior Business Analyst
Swinton Insurance
Manchester
04.2011 - 07.2015
- Elicited and documented functional and non-functional requirements for all public-facing websites and internal call centre applications.
- Collaborated with cross-functional stakeholders including Marketing, Business Change, and Pricing to gather, validate, and prioritize requirements using the MoSCoW method.
- Championed the shift from Waterfall to Agile methodology within the Information Systems Department. This involved introducing and planning two-week iterations while also managing and monitoring progress against plans.
- Led business-critical regulatory projects as a Lead Analyst.
- Delivered a new branch network and call centre quote and buy application by partnering with key business owners to gather requirements, creating user stories and acceptance tests using the Gherkin technique and UML diagrams when appropriate as well as obtaining estimates from all disciplines and securing business sign-off.
- Ensured successful application launch through by training the IT service desk and providing on-site support during the pilot and full rollout phases.
- Facilitated continuous improvement by leading daily stand-up meetings and end-of-sprint retrospectives to identify and address risks and issues.
- Mentored junior analysts within the Swinton Analyst community.
- Managed a team of two junior analysts, providing weekly one-on-one meetings and conducting performance reviews.
Business Analyst
Swinton Insurance
Manchester
02.2008 - 04.2011
- Led the launch of multiple quote and buy websites (Home, Bike, Van) through cross-functional collaboration. Collaborated with Marketing and Business Change to gather requirements, document functional specifications using wireframes, and facilitate handover to development and testing teams.
- Delivered a mobile car quote application in collaboration with the Marketing team.
- Implemented the redesign of the call centre quote and buy application, collaborating with Business Change to develop new question sets and scripts for improved efficiency.
- Implemented a new pricing strategy for renewal quotes. This comprehensive project involved gathering requirements from a third-party source and translating them into actionable development and testing specifications for the internal team.
- Developed aggregator mapping documents to enable quote requests and retrieval from the Swinton quote engine by aggregators like Money Supermarket and Confused.
Education
Bachelor of Science - Business Information Technology
Staffordshire University
Stafford 09.2001 - 06.2005
Skills
- JIRA
- Agile/scrum projects
- Miro
- Requirements gathering
- User experience analysis
- Agile and Scrum methodologies
- Product roadmap planning
- User stories
- Sprint planning
- Backlog management
- Product training
Certification
Business Analysis Diploma, British Computing Society: 2008 - 2009
Completed the core diploma modules over a two week intensive course and
passed the oral exam in 2009
Volunteer Work
I am a Brownie leader at 1st Altrincham Brownies and 3rd Altrincham Guides, I spend three hours a week with 40 young girls completing various areas of the Girl Guiding programme such as first aid, mindfulness, life skills and foreign languages.
My ability to plan effectively at work transfers into this role as it is absolutely necessary to plan a term at a time, with my leadership team, to ensure maximum efficiency each week so that girls earn the much coveted badges.
References
References available upon request.
Timeline
Senior Business Analyst
PeppercornAI
06.2024 - Current
Senior Business Analyst
Membr
05.2019 - 05.2024
Senior Business Systems Analyst
Swinton Insurance
07.2015 - 05.2019
Senior Business Analyst
Swinton Insurance
04.2011 - 07.2015
Business Analyst
Swinton Insurance
02.2008 - 04.2011
Bachelor of Science - Business Information Technology
Staffordshire University
09.2001 - 06.2005
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