Senior Systems Analyst – Store Inventory & Order Management

Cape Union Mart is South Africa’s leading outdoor, fashion, and lifestyle retailer, with a proud heritage of delivering exceptional quality and service for over 90 years. Our IT Division is at the forefront of digital transformation, driving innovation and efficiency across all business systems. As part of our dynamic and collaborative IT team, you will play a crucial role in shaping the future of our enterprise solutions, working on cutting-edge technology, and contributing to impactful projects in a fast-paced retail environment. If you’re passionate about technology, problem-solving, and making a difference, Cape Union Mart is the perfect place to grow your career!

Job Purpose:

The Senior Systems Analyst – Store Inventory & Order Management is responsible for analysing, designing, documenting, supporting, and continuously improving Cape Union Mart’s Store Inventory (SIOCS) and Omnichannel Order Management (ORP) platforms.

The role provides senior systems analysis capability across business-critical retail systems supporting store inventory optimisation, stock receiving, transfers, stock counts, adjustments, fulfilment, click and collect, delivery, returns, cancellations, customer orders, and inventory accuracy processes.

Working closely with IT, business teams, vendors, and delivery teams, the incumbent ensures requirements are well understood, solutions are clearly defined, integrations are accurately specified, and changes are delivered with appropriate testing, operational readiness, and production support.

Key Responsibilities:

• Analyse business requirements, processes, system behaviours, and integration impacts across SIOCS and Omnichannel platforms.
• Translate business needs into clear functional specifications, technical specifications, user stories, process flows, interface requirements, and acceptance criteria.
• Support solution design across store inventory, order fulfilment, and customer order lifecycle processes, ensuring requirements are practical, scalable, supportable, and aligned to business priorities.
• Analyse and document integrations across inventory, merchandise, orders, fulfilment, customer, loyalty, middleware, and enterprise platforms.
• Work with developers, technical leads, QA, vendors, and business stakeholders to clarify requirements, resolve gaps, and support delivery.
• Support enhancements, configuration, testing, releases, upgrades, and change requests through structured analysis and documentation.
• Assist with incident, problem, and service request resolution by analysing root causes, data flows, system logs, integration failures, inventory discrepancies, and business impacts.
• Contribute to system stability through proactive analysis, monitoring review, knowledge documentation, support handover, and operational readiness activities.
• Coordinate and support testing activities including test scenario definition, defect triage, UAT support, regression testing, stock movement validation, fulfilment testing, and production validation.
• Participate in Agile delivery, backlog refinement, sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives, and governance forums.
• Collaborate with Stores, eCommerce, Supply Chain, Customer Service, Finance, QA, Infrastructure, and multiple 3rd party vendors.
• Support vendor engagement by clarifying requirements, validating proposed solutions, tracking open items, and supporting release coordination.
• Identify opportunities to simplify store inventory processes, improve documentation, reduce operational risk, and enhance system resilience.

Required Technical and Professional Expertise:

Experience:

• 3+ years’ experience in systems analysis, business analysis, application support, systems integration, or solution delivery.
• 2+ years’ experience working with complex business-critical systems in a senior analyst or specialist capacity.
• Experience with SIOCS / Store Inventory, Order Management, eCommerce, retail, or inventory-focused transactional systems.
• Experience supporting business-critical production systems, including incidents, releases, change management, and operational support processes.
• Experience analysing APIs, middleware, databases, integrations, batch processes, and cloud-based platforms.
• Retail store operations, inventory management, or omnichannel commerce experience would be advantageous.

Technical Skills:

• Strong systems analysis, requirements gathering, process mapping, and solution documentation skills.
• Ability to write functional specifications, technical specifications, interface requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Understanding of API integrations and REST/SOAP web services.
• Strong SQL skills for data analysis, investigation, reconciliation, and issue diagnosis.
• Experience working with JSON, XML, SQL databases, inventory transactions, logs, monitoring tools, and integration traces.
• Knowledge of release management, deployment controls, regression testing, UAT, and production validation.
• Awareness of application security, access control, authentication, and data protection principles.

Professional Competencies:

• Ability to deliver clear analysis outputs within tight deadlines.
• Strong analytical, investigative, and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to engage both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong attention to detail and ability to produce structured, accurate, and supportable documentation.
• Self-motivated and capable of working independently while maintaining alignment with team objectives.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• Certifications or training in business analysis, systems analysis, Agile delivery or Project Management.

Additional Information:

• This is a permanent/full-time position based at Cape Union Mart’s IT Division.
• Occasional travel may be required based on project needs.
• The role requires the ability to work in a fast-paced retail environment with evolving business requirements.