Sales Customer Service

Marshall Saidel

** ****** *******

Hillsdale, New Jersey 07642

201-***-**** *******@*****.***

Summary of Experience

• Innovative Product Management executive with over fifteen years of professional experience in software, telecom and hardware environments.

• Proven experience in both entrepreneurial and large corporate environments. Long-term experience managing teams that include engineering, product management and business consulting team members.

• Highly motivated with a “can do” approach and a keen ability to introduce creative thinking and problem solving in all types of environments.

• Certified Product Manager. Expert in gathering product requirements to international product launches that include the development of strategic business plans, roadmaps, MRDs/PRDs, competitive (including SWOT analysis) and market analysis, collateral development, strategic partnerships, selecting and managing Beta rollouts, presentations and product demonstrations.

• Expert in managing business/sales support teams through to RFP creation.

• Expert in communicating customer features through training, presenting to international sales teams and in “Go to Market” strategies.

• Experienced in the penetration of new markets and business expansion of current customers.

• Strategic planner with history of delivering profitable business growth.

Professional Experience

Morgan Stanley, May 2010 – present

Vice President, Product Management

• Lead Product Management and two Product Managers in the IT division of this major financial services Firm, which includes the development of applications and selection of vendor products to be used internally.

• Developed and launched a Blackberry and Web-based Visual Voicemail system based on the open source Asterisk platform. This is a cost effective replacement of an end of life offering (Octel) when compared to comparable vendor products. Product provides notification to users by text message or email and then access to messages either from a mobile device or Web-based interface. Product is positioned as the next generation Voicemail platform.

• Developed and launched the Rapid Notification System which is enabled in the event of an emergency. The system employs a Web-based interface that allows for the quick creation and distribution of messages either by Vmail, text message, pager and email to key individuals in the Firm.

• Developed and launched a mobility tool that provides cost savings by setting a local callback telephone number which turns all calls as incoming calls and thereby saving on cell phone charges. The system also provides seamless integration with our Voicemail, employee directory and audio conferencing system.

• Developed two Wi-Fi offerings that allow Guests (visitors that are on site) and Employees of the Firm to have Wi-Fi Internet access. Solutions allow for Smart phones (iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry devices) and laptops to have Wi-Fi access. First release also employs Good technology for Apple devices so users can access personal email and contacts.

• Developed and launched an audio conferencing system that saves approximately $4M/year in external conference service charges. The system also provides a 20% capacity increase, improvements in stability and audio quality.

• Responsible for vendor infrastructure products and product delivery of Dealer Boards/Turrets, Intercoms, IP/SIP desk phones, audio conferencing and wireless devices (BlackBerry).

• Work extensively with internal users to capture their needs that are prioritized into roadmaps and requirements that form the basis of MRDs and PRDs.

• Daily interaction with development on product feature functionality, use cases and project management of releases.

• Manage international “Go to Market” activities that include developing customer facing collateral and training presentations.

ARGI, August 2008 – May 2010

Product Analyst Director

• Managed the product analyst function, spearheading the development of the company’s forward looking product. Acuity provides subscription fulfillment for Publishers of both Digital Media and Print-based publications. The Customer portal provides a set of Web applications that enable audience members to perform administration functions such as register, log in, search, buy, and manage their profile. Solution was sold to customers or offered as a SaaS.

• Developed detailed digital media and print-based product requirements based on customer, sales and competitive input which formed the basis for MRDs and PRDs. Successfully met aggressive milestones with the introduction of two major releases that surpassed customer expectations!

• Developed the product strategy that became the basis for the product roadmap and release definition.

• Produced product and/or project artifacts that included reports, specifications and prototypes that utilized UI design methodologies.

• Trained QA on important use cases which became the basis of functional test cases.

• Trained Sales in new product releases and how it relates to our value proposition.

• Worked with Marketing and Technical Writers to produce end-user documentation, training materials and “Go to Market” collateral.

• Weekly sessions with CTO and VP, Engineering in feature definition and release planning activities.

• Managed product lifecycle and enhancement request lists

• Point of escalation for sales, professional services, customer service, training, and technical support

Kirusa, Inc. March 2007 – July 2008

Director, Product Management

• Managed the product management function of a venture backed early startup company.

• Developed a SMS solution which allowed mobile users to send and reply to SMS messages with voice. Also, developed applications to distribute other content utilizing the Voice SMS platform.

• Captured 16 global Service Providers during my tenure and was offered as a SaaS that we managed.

• Developed Product Roadmaps, wrote MRDs and Business Plans that were responsive to customer needs and the competitive environment.

• Collected and interpreted customer business requirements into clear product specifications that international development team translated into product features and functions.

• Expert in capacity planning and scaling of Enterprise customers growth. Developed a capacity planning tool used by Sales Support personnel to compute customer configurations allowing for customer growth.

• Project Release management that included automated builds of software release and release notes to be used by Sales and Customers.

• Performed competitive and market analysis in order to provide proper guidance and product strategy.

• Weekly sessions with CEO and VPs regarding status, customer deployment and release planning activities.

• Presentations to Board of Directors - included competitive analysis, product roadmaps and latest release contents.

• Supported international sales team writing RFPs, presentations, collateral, training and responding to their questions.

Raritan Computer, May 2003 – March 2007

Product Management Director

• Managed $50M in P&L product managing the Paragon line of KVM switches (network access devices). Full life cycle management that included the end of life of products and international release of new products capturing customer requirements. Successful penetration of new markets that provided increased revenue growth.

• Built power management business from $600K in 2004 to $6M in revenue that included OEM partner relationships.

• Launched six KVM switch releases that included the management of offshore engineering team, marketing and selling of product.

• Launched the development of a software graphical user interface for a KVM switch that included the management of offshore engineering team, marketing and selling of product.

• Launched the development of a Web-based Remote IP User Station to be used with analog cat5 KVM switch, through to marketing and selling of product

• Partnered with Sales which included customer support, presentations, demos, training and successful sales strategies resulting in additional revenues of $1.5 million.

• Managed and selected Beta customers for product launches and solicited customer input for product enhancements.

• Developed Strategic Business plan that included competitive analysis, market trends, pricing, distribution channels, e-marketing and product direction. Plan was approved by executive team and implemented.

• Project Managed all release activities that included the writing of release notes and firmware distribution on Web site.

Apogee Networks, May 2000 – March 2003

Director of Product Management

• Managed $5 million in P&L in the first year developing usage-based performance management software for Enterprise and Service Provider markets. Service Provider’s were able to bill based on usage and visibility into the content being used. On the Enterprise side, the product delivered hard dollar economic savings. Provided metering, reporting, analytics and chargeback solutions for applications and services running on the network. The software addressed management challenges by gaining visibility into the usage and performance of resources.

• Conducted customer research using the Cooper Interactive Design methodology in the development of requirements.

• Completed two major releases (five months each) ahead of schedule and under budget surpassing customer expectations

• Created customer-provisioning requirements of ISP billing product. Researched competitive offerings and solicited customer input to develop Customer Service Representative and Self Care requirements. Employed Siebel via a Web-based interface.

• Developed product requirements and managed joint product integration with Cisco Systems and Northern Telecom. Included programming staff, product managers, marketing and sales personnel. Developed first of its kind usage-based billing of cached content, surpassing all competitive offerings.

• Partnering with Sales, Business Development and Channel partners and managing Business Consultant’s allowed us to successfully penetrate new markets increasing revenue by $2 million. Responsibilities included resource prioritization, sales qualification, presentations, training, demos, question resolution and supervision of RFP responses.

AT&T/Lucent/Avaya, March 1982 – May 2000

Lucent/Avaya, March 1997 – May 2000

Strategy and Architecture Director

• Managed a team of five engineers in architectural strategy of voice and data products. Developed strategies that included convergence of voice and data products, a VoIP PBX, a communications web-based Portal and identified strategic vendor relationships. Resulted in key product initiatives that were developed into products.

• Managed $5 million budget and seven developers in a Voice over IP Gateway product, creating the first in the industry commercial IP Gateway, completed ahead of schedule and winning the “Trail Blazer” award.

• Led planning of CRM capability within VoIP PBX. MRD included requirements and competitive research (Siebel and other CRM leaders) for “Build vs Partnership” decision that led to the Soundlogic acquisition.

AT&T, March 1982 – March 1997

Senior Product Manager, Easy Commerce Services

• Managed $2.5 Million in P&L directing development and marketing to sell digital content (music, software and information) within B2C e-commerce offering. Partnered with Digital Rights Management (DRM) vendors, musical artists and record companies. First Web Hosting and e-commerce site to offer DRM capabilities.

• Managed $4 Million in P&L directing development and marketing in the creation of an Internet Email ASP service. Turned around delayed project by organizing resources to refocus strategy and business plan. Project was delivered ahead of schedule and was first Email ASP offering within the Internet industry

Senior Architecture Manager, Bell Laboratories

• Led team to develop a multimedia collaboration offering that merged telephony, LAN and video features. Wrote MRD that included requirements, competitive analysis, vendor partnerships and upgrade strategy. Product was first in the industry to converge technologies over one network to provide Multimedia collaboration.

• Managed a “proof of concept” team of five developers to develop an Enterprise wireless telephone tied to a PBX and person’s extension. Demo and report to senior management led to the development of product.

• Designed an architecture that allowed for common applications and configurations across the product-line. Recommendation significantly reduced complexity and customer management of products.

• Developed the requirements of a next generation multimedia email-messaging product. Similar to Adobe Acrobat, product allowed people to communicate with each other when using different software by including a viewer that was sent to the receiver of the message.

• Led a team of five developers writing technical Call Detail Record requirements for Definity and legacy PBXs.

Project Leader

• Reduced costs by moving product to a less costly computing platform. Managed five programmers in all phases of project from design to completion of project porting PBX interface from 3B2 platform to 386 PC. Result proved technical feasibility and provided significant reduction in costs.

Senior Programmer Analyst

• During product upgrades, designed and developed table driven conversion routines to interpret PBX CDR data stored in flat files to load into SQL database. PBX data now loaded in hours, where previously it took days.

Areas of Expertise

• Protocols - TCP/IP, H.323, RSVP, diffserv, X.500, SIP, CDR, XML, 802.11, WAP, CORBA, SEO

• Product Management – Pragmatic Marketing Certification in Product Management, PERT and Gantt, Business Plans, Strategic Planning, Software Development Lifecycle that includes Agile and Waterfall methodologies

• Software - HTML, XML, ‘C’, UNIX, Shell, Java J2EE, V Basic, SQL Server, CRM – Siebel, DRM, Billing, e-commerce, Web interfaces and software tools, HP OpenCall platform, J2ME,SaaS offerings

• Network/Telephony - RADIUS, RMON2, Log Files, SNMP to MIB tables, Content Management Systems from Cisco and Nortel, SMS, Avaya & VoIP PBXs, Dealer board/Turret systems, Intercom systems, Voicemail for Web-based and phone IVR systems, Audio Conferencing systems, Unified Communications, Asterisk, BREW, iPhone and Blackberry mobile clients

• Customer Interaction - Interactive Requirements Design, Voice of the Customer, Focus Groups, BETA customer roll-outs, Corporate 1000 & Trade Show presentations, new sales generation

Education

MBA, Pace University, Computer Information Science, 1981

BA, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Liberal Arts

Music & Art High School, “The Fame School”

Juilliard School of Music, Preparatory Division studying violin

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