External Project Manager (Independent Contractor)

Consulting for European start-ups as part of the EU program which deals with the entry of European innovative start-ups in the Middle East.

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External Project Manager

• Responsible for kick-starting the product post-MVP, refreshing the UI/UX, and 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 promote 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.

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External Project Consultant

• Cloud education ERP product and marketing consultant.
• 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 the shortlisting of three international vendors.
• Analysed vendor offerings and features and synthesised data to assess best-fit and feasibility.
• Drove successful commercial negotiations resulting in a 63% saving.
• Board of Governor member - actively involved in maintaining school standards as per the framework and helped the school achieve a “Good” rating up from “Acceptable”.

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Project Manager - Partner

• Developed a five-year strategic financial plan against which monthly, quarterly and yearly financial outcomes were measured.
• Programme management of the technical design, development, and delivery of multiple interrelated projects including SaaS and on-premise point-of-sale and ERP applications, label printing software, payment gateways and an integrated all-in-one POS hardware system.
• Portfolio management of our exclusive distributors and tier-one customers' digital transformation projects across GCC, Africa and Asia.
• Managed a global digital technical team, an electronics team and an industrial design team to collaborate efficiently and execute the vision towards launching product solutions and digital services that are simple, delightful, and impactful.
• 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 to the project board.
• Delivered user stories, mock-ups, wireframes, 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.
• Managed deviations to the agreed project scope, timelines and budget, by proactively notifying the PMO and other project stakeholders along with necessary remedial actions as per the organisational change management procedures.
• Identified project risks and developed mitigation plans thereby creating a comprehensive risk register.
• Developed comprehensive test plans, investigated, debugged, and fixed complex issues.
• Managed external vendors as per executed SLA / MSA.
• Championed commercial negotiations with external vendors and channel partners and enabled them to achieve yearly targets.

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Other experience includes Project Manager, Full Stack Developer, Full Stack Developer - Partner