Stephan S.
Project and Product Manager, Consultant and Trainer
Experience
Head of Digital Transformation EMEA
Rhenus Air & Ocean Management GmbH
Responsible for driving digital transformation and aligning country organizations with the Rhenus platform model
Initiated the digital transformation roadmap for five countries, ensuring alignment with global group strategy
Built and led a high-performing digital transformation consulting team, expanding delivery capacity from one to three value streams and thereby fast tracking the roadmap from 3 to 2 years
Acted as strategic advocate for 5 country organizations, ensuring group-wide cross-functional alignment
Redefined business analysis into an agile approach, reducing time-to-value for platform harmonization by 50%
Head of AI-first transformation
Skyvera LLC
Reported to the CEO, drove the AI-first transformation and product strategy to increase profitability by transforming 10 SaaS products with an ARR of $38m into AI-first, cloud-native models
Led and mentored a team of 7 product leaders, driving strategic product development projects from ideation to launch
Initiated company-wide hackathons with 200+ employees to fast-track the application of AI technology to real world use cases, resulting in 12 cross-functional AI innovations now being productized
Established data-driven processes between engineering and product, improving predictability for a $1.2m dev capacity
Minimized time-to-market with solid make/buy decisions and partner management for a total contract value of $0.5m
Streamlined product operations into an agile, AI-first discipline, reducing average time-to-feature by 25% through establishing optimized processes and adopting AI solutions for product discovery, market research, and user analytics
VP Product AI Automation
omni:us
Set up a robust product vision and developed technology, architecture and organization strategy for AI-driven claim process automation
Analyzed, understood and solved challenges in insurance process automation
Assured customer success by driving project delivery with requirement analysis and architecture integration
Brought P&C insurance claims automation to the next level with thought leadership and industry expertise
Identified and refined the SaaS business strategy and IT target picture for product, cloud architecture and operations and derived an actionable roadmap that resonates with customers, investors and developers alike
Planned, controlled and executed the transformation from a start-up with proven product-market fit to a scale-up with profitable operations
Guided the data science, product and engineering teams to establish and maintain templates and generic AI models for complex claim automation under a release cycle
Established a vision with a technical and functional roadmap, ramped up the product management organization with 4 FTEs, enabled the delivery organization with product knowledge, and defined OKRs with KPIs to enable data-driven decisions
Drove a cross departmental platform architecture consolidation and SaaS adoption project to minimize project efforts by 30% and reduce cloud computing costs by 70%
VP Global Property Claims Strategy / Senior Director of Product Management
Solera, Inc.
Drove product growth and provided a consolidated strategic direction for a group of scale-up solutions in Solera's software and data portfolio for insurance claims
Prepared sound business cases, understood P&C market dynamics, identified trends and drove portfolio innovation
Collaborated closely with key insurance customers, made make/buy decisions and enabled industry partnerships
Represented value propositions and delivered pitches in front of customers and at industry events
Applied market expertise, product instinct and hands-on agile methodologies to ideate, conceptualize, measure, pursue and close product and sales opportunities
Created a new SaaS product to measure sustainability in home insurance claims based on a joint venture, presented the vision at industry events, and secured a $1.7m development project
Led product teams with direct line responsibility for a team of 8 and drove the transformation into a product-driven matrix organization with end-to-end KPI-based controlling
Participated in the leadership team in 4 scale-up entities and led a distributed product organization with 30 FTE and a portfolio revenue of $20m
Worked on due diligence and guided post-merger integration of two acquired SaaS platforms and executed go-to-markets in 4 countries, scaling new market sales to 40% of total revenue
Interim Service Director Data Security EMEA/APAC
Digital Guardian/Fortra
Assured data security, customer success and delivery efficiency
Analyzed and fine-tuned customers' data protection strategies
Negotiated service agreements and took responsibility for project delivery
Managed the Professional Services team as direct line manager for 12 employees
Owned P&L responsibility for a professional services organization with $3m revenue
Empowered the EMEA services organization by creating growth opportunities for the team and restoring efficiency and profitability through a healthy reorganization
Technical Director and Global Product Manager
Symbility Solutions Inc./CoreLogic
Moved forward property & casualty insurance claims with Symbility's SaaS insurance platform
Performed product management and hands-on requirements engineering in Jira and AHA
Assessed local markets and addressed them with a compliant product
Identified and ramped up technology, reseller and delivery partners
Grew the international organization from 2 to 30 staff members contributing to 50% of the company’s annual revenue
Drove go-to-markets by setting up delivery organizations in 7 countries via value-add resellers and in 2 countries by building new business entities
Program Manager Data Security EMEA
Digital Guardian
- Secured IT world with responsibility for project success in Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
- Managed projects, teams and accounts for strategic global accounts
Project Manager DACH / Business Consultant
BlueCielo ECM Solutions B. V.
- Consulted on enterprise content management (ECM) systems
- Conducted business analysis, pre-sales, project management and solution architecture
IT Consultant Document Management
OpenText/IXOS
- Worked with document management systems as consultant, IT architect and project manager
- Relocated to the US to drive go-to-market with pre-sales and requirement analysis
IT Professional Banking and Insurance
IBM Global Services
- Developed databases and programmed with Lotus Notes/Domino as technical consultant and IT architect
Summary
Result-oriented product management consultant and business trainer with a focus on digital and AI transformation projects.
Through several leadership roles in IT project and product management and consulting, I combine practical experience with strategic insights and leverage this for practice-oriented, inspiring trainings.
My focus: directly applicable knowledge that participants can immediately use in their daily work.
Through storytelling and an appreciative style, I foster trust and sustainable learning success.
Languages
Education
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Mathematics · Spain
RWTH Aachen
Diploma · Mathematics and Information Technology · Germany
Certifications & licenses
Certified Senior Project Manager (IPMA Level B)
IPMA
Product Management (Pragmatic Marketing PMC-I)
Pragmatic Marketing
Scrum Fundamentals Certified (SFC)
Project Management Professional (PMI PMP)
PMI
Certified Business Analyst Professional (IIBA CBAP)
IIBA
IBM Certified Associate Developer
IBM
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE)
Microsoft
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