Product Manager

DALE COSGRO

**** ******** ******, *********, ** *5747 ● Cell: 916-***-**** ● ****.******@*****.***

PRODUCT MANAGER – THE CATALYST FOR PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

An experienced high tech product manager, who is a self-starter, big-picture oriented, innovative, loves challenges, and finds ways to get tasks/programs delivered on schedule and within budget with high quality results.

SUMMARY OF QUALIFICATIONS

In the role of product manager, I become the catalyst for product innovations for your organization. I am the go-to person to establish product line vision, roadmaps, and fix problems with products. I do this by collecting product requirements from all key stakeholders including customers, sales / field teams, engineering, support, as well as becoming the subject matter expert by using and testing the product myself. By putting myself in the shoes of my customers, I develop a vision and a roadmap of product improvements. I document the product vision and roadmap to drive various teams to deliver products that meet or exceed the needs of the customer.

The junction where technology meets business requires a variety of skills including financial analysis, technological aptitude, cross team leadership, collateral development, communications, program development, process management, product positioning, capturing product requirements, and much more. See the professional experience section below for examples of my use of these skills. I would like to bring my skillset and my record of positive outcomes to your company.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

McAfee LLC 2017 - 2021

Product Manager / Operations Manager – Retail Products

Create new SKUs, obsolete SKUs, create price lists, and refresh packaging artwork annually as requested by sales and product marketing departments.

Work with sales, manufacturing, engineering, business systems, marketing, and others to setup new SKUs and / or obsolete SKUs to fit the business needs.

Created 300+ SKUs over each new year

Automated Excel based work process into a database application-based process

Intel Corporation 2016 - 2017

Channel Marketing Manager

Bring additional profit opportunity to Intel’s Technology Providers.

Identify and track progress on 600 top Intel channel accounts in the SweetLabs Adoption Program.

Cosgro Marketing 2015 - 2016

Owner – Content Developer

Created printer ready artwork for Intel Security products for the Intel Channel group.

Completed and delivered 119 cards with complete artwork for Intel’s print supplier within 6 months.

Intel Corporation 2013 - 2015

Global Product Manager – McAfee products

The high level goal of the team is to sell existing McAfee products through the Intel Reseller Channel team. The position is more outbound than inbound and is focused more on selling strategies than product features. The core function of the job is to drive geography based teams to develop and execute demand generation programs. This role uses may of the standard product manager skills including setting pricing, creating positioning and collateral, gaining project approvals, launching products, and more. Accomplishments include:

Launch new products (SaaS, MMS, LiveSafe, MAA, etc.)

Grew sales from 0 units in 2012 to 500K units in 2013 to 3.7M units in 2013

Develop new smaller product form factor to increase software activations and reduce costs

Created virtual activation cards for e-delivery

HP Enterprise Networking, 2008 - 2012

Global Product Manager - Accessories

This role included all of the key skills and processes typical of product management such as product launches, approval presentations for key milestones, writing MRDs, leading teams to deliver products, working with supply chain on cost reductions and supply issues, and more. Here are three key accomplishments during my time in this role:

Using my technical aptitude and knowledge, I was able to quickly identify our DAC cable interconnectivity problem, define and document proper bit settings in the transceiver end of the cables, ordered samples from supplier, tested samples to ensure the fix worked properly, and then drive engineering and supply chain to quickly resolve the problem permanently.

Using my financial analysis skills, I was able to successfully maintain 89% margins (primarily through component cost reductions) while steadily growing product revenues/sales over a three-year period for $250M+ HP Networking accessories product line even though competition drove price reductions on our products.

Putting myself in my customers’ shoes, I was able to drive an innovative redesign of HP Networking’s internal and external product licensing portals. The first portal improved functionality for end customers so they could self service their licenses. The second portal allowed access to licenses for internal customers such as product developers, training teams, and demo systems (self access with tracability). The third portal provided support with full functionality for the support team to assist customers – the prior version only had extremely limited capabilities.

Cisco Systems, 2007 - 2008

Programs Manager (contractor) – US and Canada Distributor Operations

The main function of this role was to develop product specific sales growth incentive programs for our US and Canadian distributors (such as Tech Data and Ingram Micro). My key contribution to the organization was to create a standardized Excel template to pull sales data from the data cube automatically creating graphs for a PowerPoint presentation allowing each distributor to see their progress towards the goal each week. Originally, the template was used for just one program and eventually, I consolidated all programs into a single status presentation improving customer satisfaction. My key accomplishment in this role is:

Through my understanding of sales data collection systems plus my ability to communicate effectively with customers, I was able to cost-effectively and efficiently create product specific programs, define sales targets, and track progress to the goal for each distributor. My budget was approximately $2M per quarter which had to be paid amongst the various distributors based upon their ability to reach the goal set for them.

Intel Corporation, 2000 - 2006

Software Enabling Manager

In this series of positions, the goals were very similar – adopt Intel Architecture features / products or optimize the software to Intel Architecture processors and systems. My job was to influence independent software vendors and influence our reseller channel to use and/or optimize their solutions for our products. Here are some of my key accomplishments:

Understanding that a full solution is required in order to sell any products, I drove the early adoption of Itanium platforms by the critical operating system vendors including Microsoft Windows, HP-UX, IBM AIX, and Linux. Then, to complete the solution, I drove the adoption of critically required middleware packages and utilities including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL Server, McAfee, and more.

Intel and BEA engineering teams co-developed versions of the JRE and J2EE packages that were optimized for Intel Architecture, however, the BEA marketing team would not require that it be installed on Intel Architecture based systems. Since they wouldn’t voluntarily install a version of Java that was optimized for Intel Architecture, we built a program to get BEA’s ISVs to install it with their application. This adoption allowed Intel platforms to win many benchmarks and remain competitive against Sun and IBM server platforms.

The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc., 1989 - 2000

Product Marketing Manager

In this series of positions, the main goal was to communicate the benefits of SCO UNIX operating systems. I learned many key skills such as product positioning, developing collateral, product presentations, white papers, and much more. While I had many accomplishments, here are a few key ones.

Launched multiple new releases of $100M+ SCO UNIX operating system product lines.

Developed “Success Stories” with big name accounts to assist in references for the sales team.

Demonstrated excellent instructional talents in teaching courses for UNIX Administration, Networking (TCP/IP, UDP, NetBEUI, DHCP, NFS, DNS, etc.), X-Windows Graphical User Interface, Train-the-Trainer, and Bourne/Korn/C shell programming.

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, University of Phoenix

Associate Degree in Digital Electronics, Lansing Community College

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