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POSITION: Data Specialist - Project 6 Months
LOCATION: Epsom Downs, Johannesburg
REPORTING TO: Director: Conservation Development
Purpose
Owns the organization’s data architecture across systems — starting with, but not limited to, the finance ERP —
and actively drives the conversion of manual data capture into automated data capture wherever it makes sense
to do so. Acts as custodian of financial data as the canonical source of truth, and builds the reporting, automation,
and integration layer connecting the ERP to the rest of the organization’s systems. This is not a passive data-analysis
role: a core part of the mandate is identifying where manual processes are introducing risk or wasted effort and building
the automation to remove them.
Relationship to the Business Central Migration
This role is not the primary technical lead on the Business Central migration — that responsibility sits with the Microsoft Partner and Finance ERP Manager as day-to-day liaison. However, this role's involvement is still load-bearing, in three specific ways:
Required Skills & Experience
Advantageous, Not Required
LOCATION: Epsom Downs, Johannesburg
REPORTING TO: Director: Conservation Development
Purpose
Owns the organization’s data architecture across systems — starting with, but not limited to, the finance ERP —
and actively drives the conversion of manual data capture into automated data capture wherever it makes sense
to do so. Acts as custodian of financial data as the canonical source of truth, and builds the reporting, automation,
and integration layer connecting the ERP to the rest of the organization’s systems. This is not a passive data-analysis
role: a core part of the mandate is identifying where manual processes are introducing risk or wasted effort and building
the automation to remove them.
Relationship to the Business Central Migration
This role is not the primary technical lead on the Business Central migration — that responsibility sits with the Microsoft Partner and Finance ERP Manager as day-to-day liaison. However, this role's involvement is still load-bearing, in three specific ways:
- Owns the data architecture that replaces what Serenic's fund-accounting layer used to do. Business Central does not natively support funds, grant, or encumbrance accounting, so this logic must be rebuilt as a dimension structure. Designing how funds, cost centers, and restricted/unrestricted tracking get modelled is a data architecture problem and sits with this role. This is the single most concrete, highest-stakes piece of migration involvement it carries.
- Owns the business logic behind anything builds on the company’s behalf, so that knowledge does not live only with the vendor. The intercompany elimination automation is the clearest current example: The Microsoft Partner builds it, but this role is responsible for understanding why it works the way it does, so the organization is not permanently dependent on the vendor to explain its own system.
- Pick up the integration and automation work that sits just outside the migration's Phase 1 boundary — connecting Kiss flow, Salesforce, and other systems to Business Central; building write-back budget reporting; eventually migrating Jet Reports to Power BI. None of this is "the migration" in the narrow sense, but all of it only becomes possible once the migration lands, and all of it is what turns a working ERP into a well-integrated one.
- In short: the Finance ERP Manager keeps the migration moving day-to-day; this role makes sure it is being built on a data structure that will actually hold up.
- Owns and maintains a data map of the organization — what data lives where, and where it needs to flow between systems (the finance ERP, Kiss flow, Salesforce, ResRequest, TallOrder, Sage 300, Jet Reports, Power BI).
- Acts as custodian of the ERP's financial data as the organization’s canonical source, guarding against corruption from manual entry and championing automation wherever possible.
- Systematically identifies manual, repetitive, or error-prone data capture processes across the organization and assesses where converting them to automated capture is appropriate — this is an active, ongoing part of the role, not an occasional project. AP Reporter, an internal tool already used to digitize previously manual field data capture, is a useful illustration of the kind of work this role should be doing more broadly, including on the operational side of the business.
- Designs and builds automation using Power Apps and Power Automate to replace manual workflows — for example, structured data-entry forms in place of ad hoc spreadsheets, or automated approval/routing steps in place of manual email chains.
- Designs and builds Power BI dashboards and reports, in collaboration with the company's BI team, including budget-vs-actual, compliance monitoring, and ad hoc analytical requests.
- Builds ERP-integrated budget reporting with write-back capability (e.g. via a tool such as Velixo), replacing the current static, Excel-based annual budget process.
- Owns the Phase 2 migration of existing Jet Reports functionality into Power BI — auditing existing reports, understanding their purpose and audience, and defining what should be rebuilt versus retired.
- Leads the data-integration design for connecting adjacent systems to Business Central — including vendor master data ownership, dimension mapping for fund/cost-center tracking, and sync error handling (relevant to Kiss flow, Salesforce, and other integrations).
- Designs the approach to historical data retention once the legacy ERP environment is decommissioned — e.g. extracting to a data lake (such as Microsoft Fabric) rather than keeping a live, costly legacy system running indefinitely.
- Build training materials and dashboards that help operational users understand the quality and purpose of the data they capture, in partnership with the People & Change role.
- Works closely with the existing in-house BI team, historically a separate, request-driven function with no direct working relationship with Finance.
Required Skills & Experience
-
- Strong data architecture or data modelling background, ideally with exposure to ERP-centric environments.
- Maintains comprehensive, up-to-date documentation and architecture diagrams of the data landscape — a mandatory, not optional, part of the role, given the succession risk inherent in such a specialized position.
- Hands-on, practical experience building automation with Power Apps and Power Automate specifically — this is a core, not peripheral, requirement for this role.
- Hands-on experience with Power BI and, ideally, Microsoft Fabric.
- Experience integrating an ERP with adjacent business systems such as CRM, procurement, point-of-sale, or payroll platforms.
- A genuine automation-first mindset — able to spot where a manual process should become an automated one, and to weigh that judgement against effort and risk, not just build automation for its own sake.
- Working SQL proficiency.
- Strong stakeholder management — this role sits across departments by design and needs to work with Finance, BI, Operations, and IT without a single clean reporting line.
Advantageous, Not Required
-
- Direct experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
- Experience with Excel-to-ERP reporting/write-back tools such as Velixo.
- Experience with multi-entity consolidation or intercompany elimination design.
- Nonprofit or donor-funded sector experience.