Customer Service Project

MOHAMMED F. MERCHANT

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**** ******* ***** ****** *****, TX 75028 214-***-**** ********.*.********@*****.***

CAREER SUMMARY

An accomplished, dynamic, passionate, and results driven Product Manager with proven management, technical, analytical,

organizational, project management, and leadership skills and background. More than 11 years of experience in the areas of

Product Management and Marketing, software development life-cycle processes, and project management methodologies,

especially skilled at identifying new business opportunities, building product strategy, and delivering innovative solutions.

Experienced in partnering with corporate business development in RFI and RFP processes and delivering world-class e-Commerce

Technology solutions to organizations in collaboration with cross-functional teams.

PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATIONS AND TECHNICAL SKILLS

Product Management Successful completion of Pragmatic Marketing® “Pragmatic Product Management” certification.

Certification:

Project Management Successful completion of “Essential Skills for Managing Projects” course from PMI Registered

Training and Tools: Education Provider. Experienced in Waterfall and Agile product development methodologies.

Software Tools Extensive Software Engineering experience and background using web technologies including Visual &

Technology: Basic and Java. Hands-on experience using Cognos analytical reporting tool, strong understanding of

data warehousing and Business Intelligence concepts.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Principal Product Manager – Travelocity Partner Network

Travelocity, Southlake, TX 02/2007 – Present

Develop and manage a portfolio of online travel products in the Loyalty and Affiliate Marketing space for Travelocity’s Premium

Service Partners like US Bank, Capital One, American Express, and AARP. Develop and monitor highly complex business plans

and product positioning in the marketplace. Oversee market research, monitor competitive activity, and identify customer needs.

Establish pricing strategies, work with engineering, development, and sales to develop new products or enhance existing products

or product lines. Lead new product definition and business plans with joint departments and collaborate with cross-functional

teams leading to a successful product launch.

Key projects and achievements:

• Mobile Travel applications – Collaborated with mobile product team in creation of product requirements for Travelocity

Mobile Travel app for iPhone and mobile travel website. The Travelocity mobile app allows iPhone users to search and

book travel products as well as provide travel related tools. Currently working with the mobile product team to launch a

mobile app for Capital One loyalty program that would allow card members to book travel related products using their

reward points.

• Capital One Travel Rewards – Owned the development and delivery of Capital One Travel Rewards website from

inception to market launch. A major product development effort that required nearly 80,000 man hours for design,

development, and launch. The project required working with various internal as well as external teams including Finance,

Sales and Customer Care, Marketing and Merchandising, Ticketing and Fulfillment, User Interface Design, IVR

Management, Configuration Management, and Engineering and Development to gather detailed business requirements,

document use cases, creation of product mockups, detailed test plans, marketing and launch plans, and post-launch

support. The Capital One No Hassle Travel Rewards program has 8 million active card members.

• Online Loyalty and Rewards Travel Platform - Served as a product /marketing launch leader in bringing a new product

catering to the online travel bookings for loyalty industry. The product provides a private label solution for major

financial institutions, retailers, and suppliers that allows their customers to book various online travel products using their

rewards/loyalty currency. The program is estimated to grow at a rapid pace, bringing in about $1 billion in revenues for

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the company in next 5 years. Major client roster includes travel rewards programs for Washington Mutual Bank, US

Bank, PNC Bank, and HSBC Bank.

• International Affiliate Programs - Oversaw the launch of new affiliate programs for Travelocity Latin America and

Lastminute.com sites in U.S. and successful migration of existing affiliates from site59.com to Lastminute.com site which

accounted for 15% of the site’s gross sales. Launch efforts included creation of new ad modules, booking widgets, setup

of affiliate commission structures and supplier value-proposition, and strategies for successful market positioning for the

new programs.

• Travelocity Branded Affiliate Program - Lead efforts to revamp the existing Travelocity Branded Affiliate Program

which accounts for 5% of the overall Travelocity’s gross sales. Initiatives included enhancements and redesign of all

existing marketing, merchandising and advertising material, tools, and booking widgets and realignment of all current

marketing activities. Achieved the goal of having double digit growth in gross sales for 2007 and repositioned the affiliate

program in the competitive marketplace for continuous growth.

Senior Program Manager – Business Intelligence

CitiCards Information Technology - CitiGroup, Irving, TX 09/2005 – 01/2007

Execute and deliver the Business Intelligence (BI) strategy, projects, and programs for a designated client service team. Provide

leadership and direction to project teams by understanding business processes, gathering requirements, identifying potential

usability issues, managing scope, and by ensuring that an appropriate level of application quality is maintained at all times.

Develop project plans, manage resources allocated to the project, and execute all project tasks to successful completion, adhering to

the Project Management Office standards. Communicate continually and frequently to the executive leadership on status of

deliverables, risks, and accomplishments.

Key projects and achievements:

• Managed and lead a major project with more than 10,000 hours for the Risk Early Warning (REW) organization to extract

data from more than 10 different source systems and load it into the Enterprise Data Warehouse and Cognos reporting

portal. Project included working with several user groups to define requirements, perform analytical research on business

related metrics, and create unified definitions for these metrics across the organization. New application enabled the

organization to realize savings of several millions of dollars by efficient resource allocations and daily reporting of Key

Performance Indicators.

• Successfully managed and lead a large cross-functional team through full system development life cycle for a 6 month

multi-million dollar Business Intelligence project for Credit Risk Early Warning (CREW) organization. The project

retired a legacy manual reporting platform built using MS Excel and Crystal Reports and replaced it with a more robust,

automated analytical reporting solution using Cognos.

• Participated in several Project Management Office initiatives to define and create new set of PM standards for the newly

created Business Intelligence organization. Also worked on several process improvement initiatives for the team to

streamline and improve existing processes.

Senior Lead Analyst – Transaction Processing

CitiCards Information Technology - CitiGroup, Irving, TX 06/2004 – 08/2005

Perform analysis and design to develop and document detailed technical designs. Perform programming and unit testing for

customer service desktop applications using Visual Basic. Support developed code through system and user acceptance testing and

follow through to ensure proper implementation. Provide support to users during regression testing for all software releases.

Support installed code during established 'warranty' period. Participate in production on-call rotation schedule.

Key projects and achievements:

• Participated in all phases of development life-cycle of a major software release which included creation of a new

integrated desktop for customer service and collection representatives for Sears credit card portfolio. The n-tier

application consisted of several hundred windows and VBA modules, with a backend of Oracle and MS Access.

• Acted as Lead Developer on several subsequent Sears integrated desktop releases, facilitated requirement gathering

sessions, tracked progress of projects using Microsoft Project, and provided daily and weekly project status to upper

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management. Also served as an Implementation Manager on Sears releases and managed implementation and post-

implementation activities to make sure all tasks are completed on schedule and meet the checkpoint deadlines.

• Participated in analysis, design, and coding phases of Lands’ End, K-Mart, and Project Phantom (Sears/TSYS conversion

to RPL/FDR).

Software Engineer – Billing Services

Sprint – Long-Distance Division, Irving, TX 06/1999 – 05/2004

Develop and maintain various billing applications and customer order entry tools written in Visual Basic, Java, Smalltalk, C++, and

VxREXX for OS/2. Assist management in strategic planning for billing applications and assess technical aspects of applications

being transitioned in the department. Interact with customers/users and other internal groups to gather business requirements,

develop unit test plans and perform software tests, prepare and maintain proper documentation, and provide production support for

assigned systems.

Key projects and achievements:

• Performed development and maintenance of a major billing system for 100+ military bases. Provided 24/7 support to the

Billing groups and resolved high severity issues with utter urgency to meet billing deadlines.

• Automated various invoice-creation and billing error-detection routines to reduce amount of non-value-added tasks by

50% and to improve billing system performance by more than 100% (up from 100 to 300 invoices per hour).

• Contributed in analysis, design, coding, and implementation for several releases of Sprint ION, a multi-million dollar web-

based order entry system, built on an n-tier architecture with HTML/JavaScript presentation layer, business functionality

in EJBs, and an Oracle database as a backend. Mentored CGEY employees in preparing analysis and design documents

and understanding Sprint business requirements.

• Designed and developed a web based application to assist management in keeping track of project statuses for the

department. Used HTML/JavaScript for presentation and Java Servlets to retrieve and update Oracle databases using

JDBC.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Master of Science in Mgmt. and Administrative Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX – Dec 2010

Major: Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Master of Business Administration, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX – Dec 2005

Major: General Management

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK – May 1999

Major: Management Information Systems

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