Product Manager
PwC - United Arab Emirates
Total years of experience :27 years, 1 Months
Volunteer consulting for European startups as part of the EU program which deals with the entry of European innovative startups in the Middle East.
• HIMENUS is a fast growing affordable food aggregator launched in 2022 with a unique and innovative business model, and additionally, provides vendors with paid premium SaaS features and mobile apps.
• Responsible for kick-starting the product post MVP, refreshing the UI/UX, reinventing the business model and go-to-market strategy.
• Took over as agile product owner for the payment gateway, backlog, road map, user stories, and release of new features. Worked with users, stakeholders, and a scrum master to validate releases.
• Established quality and accountability by re-working the Jira board workflow.
• Delivered a comprehensive marketing plan that included quantitative and qualitative market research, brand positioning, industry and competitors analysis, features and usage analysis, business models simulations and pricing analysis, target vendors and consumer personas that promotes product affinity and brand advocacy thereby increasing app download, renewal and retention rates.
• Implemented an inbound digital marketing strategy using Hubspot and trained the sales and social media team, and agencies. Migrated their Excel sheets and Google docs into Hubspot for real-time dashboard reporting.
• Delivered a 90% month-on-month increase in outlets (supply side) registering on the platform and a 32% increase in per transaction gross margin.
• Cloud education ERP product and marketing consultant to Capital School Dubai, the flagship campus of Al Khabeer Capital KSA.
• Acted as the liaison between people ops, IT, finance, administration, procurement, senior leadership team, clinic and other departments.
• Mapped requirements and spearheaded product discovery and market research, resulting in shortlisting of three international vendors.
• Analyzed vendor offerings and features and synthesized data to assess best-fit and feasibility.
• Drove successful commercial negotiations; finalized product vendor; planned and executed the integration resulting in a 63% saving.
• Wozzil is a digital and hardware POS and payment gateway solutions company catering to the worldwide retail and hospitality sector.
• Led design, development, and delivery of three products - SaaS and on-premise point-of-sale software, label printing software, payment gateways and an integrated all-in-one POS hardware system. The products were delivered on time and 10% under budget.
• Managed a 7-person digital team located globally, 5-person electronics team in UK and 3-person industrial design team to collaborate efficiently and execute the CEO’s vision towards launching product solutions that are simple, delightful, and impacting.
• Decreased product tech debt by 25% while managing the development of a large variety of business products.
• Created and communicated project status reports with reliable data on accomplishments and KPIs that reported new development versus maintenance, development per team, and cost by sprint.
• Delivered user stories, mock-ups, wire frames, and storyboards and negotiated day-to-day trade-offs across multiple dimensions such as value, time, cost, and risk.
• Communicated weekly verbal and written storytelling of customer issues, customer journey, and product outcomes and presented findings and recommendations to product teams and stakeholders.
• Championed commercial negotiations with channel partners and enabled them to over achieve yearly targets by 40%.
• Al Habtoor Innosoft a B2B and B2C digital products (desktop, web, mobile, cloud) and services company, serving the retail, hospitality and higher education market and with development centers in India, Malaysia and US.
• Owned the product backlog and strategic road map, continuously prioritized and scoped user stories and PRDs in accordance with new understandings and validations of market needs and positioning.
• Managed multiple products and competing priorities for over 25 engineers in three software development teams in an agile environment, without formal authority, delivering on tight deadlines in high levels of uncertainty using MoSCoW prioritization.
• Established solid agile practices and mentored the product and development teams to drive innovation, higher quality, and faster delivery in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
• Defined product metrics and analyzed data in order to take product decisions based on user behaviors.
• Reinforced customer success, marketing and sales activities with global customers and prospects.
• Became the subject-matter expert of the company's digital offerings and payment gateway. Planned, documented and conducted training sessions to dozens of sales, product and marketing professionals as well as prospects and customers worldwide.
• Led the transformation to proper scrum while maintaining high product quality, increasing go-to-market velocity and improving the product's measurable added value.
• Headhunted by the IT director to design and program the traffic department’s digital services.
• Working with senior IT managers I wrote the payment gateway code in close collaboration with Etisalat-Comtrust for UAE’s first government digital service to pay fines online. This service generated US$ 1 million revenues in the first 6 months and at its peak the service processed US$ 2 million in fine payments per month.
• Wrote the code for the live internet auctioning of number plates and this service generated US$ 40 million in revenues.
• Maintained the Unified Crime System, UAE wide criminal incidents reporting and analytics website based on Oracle business intelligence.
• Converting technical specifications and requirements, designing and programming digital experiences including payment gateways for CISCO, Mashreq Bank and hundred plus B2B and B2C organizations.
• Designed and developed the UAE Business Directory which won the “Middle East VISA - Arabianbusiness.com Best English Portal Award”.