Alex Gerstel
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Tampa, FL, United States
Toptal member since May 4, 2020
Alex has 11 years of experience driving the SDLC for property and customer relationship management systems (PMS and CRM), proprietary applications, Salesforce, and technology integrations in fast-paced Agile environments. He identifies the most impactful initiatives to maximize roadmap development and backlog management. Alex is engaging and strategic, has a history of process innovation and product launch ability, and has worked in travel, customer support, wealth management, and loyalty.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Business Analysis
- Cross-functional Team Leadership
- Product Management
- Product Owner
- Product Strategy
- Salesforce
- Software Integration
Work Experience
Senior Product Manager | Property Management Systems
Marriott
- Organized and facilitated multiple implementation workstreams, including Loyalty, Digital, Front Office, Housekeeping, and UI overlay for Marriott’s PMS of choice in North America, Agilysys’ Stay PMS.
- Managed and maintained a healthy vendor relationship with Agilysys, balancing the needs of multiple business stakeholders and keeping Agilysys accountable in a fair, transparent, and consistent manner.
- Evaluated requirements, then implemented standards for and executed requirement revalidation. This exercise resulted in recapturing millions of dollars in unspent funds, which were reallocated to higher priorities.
- Partnered with Agilysys and Marriott stakeholders to deliver over 100 new enhancements, influenced the enterprise architecture on new services, and drove the strategic data management of proprietary logic.
Owner
Freelance ExcelsiorSpreadsheet
- Researched the Excel spreadsheet marketplace to identify areas of opportunity and create a business plan.
- Developed a series of reusable templates for download on Etsy.
- Created custom spreadsheets for clients at a higher cost.
- Increased shop visits, orders, and revenue every year since the opening in 2017.
Salesforce Product Manager
Commonwealth Financial Network
- Joined a mid-flight Salesforce Financial Service Cloud initial implementation in ‘red’ status and rallied the team to deliver beyond the originally-committed MVP through value definition and attention to stakeholder facilitation.
- Restored partner product relationships through communication and transparency.
- Improved quality, speed-to-market, and team cohesion by reorganizing the 30-person product team into squads and transitioning the delivery model from Waterfall to Scrum/Agile with monthly deployments.
- Refocused delivery with emphasis on quality and business value by introducing story-writing standards, creating and adhering to a stakeholder-driven roadmap, and implementing business validation practices.
- Launched the utilization of Jira and Confluence for story-writing, documentation, sprint management, release management, and roadmap management, generating clarity on work effort at every level of the organization.
Director of Guest Service Products
Marriott
- Developed the technology roadmap and agile backlog to align with a broader group and portfolio objectives.
- Collaborated with cross-functional team members to drive value and develop customer-friendly features and enhancements.
- Provided direction for technology development, including cost estimation, budget management, scope, delivery strategy definition, and established milestones and schedules.
- Managed approximately 65 annual deployments conducted in a Scrum Agile fashion across five multi-departmental squads for Marriott's Salesforce implementation, consisting of around 88 thousand active users globally.
- Led an offshore top-tier support team to triage and solution critical issues.
- Advised key stakeholders in on-property and call center operations, loyalty, digital, marketing, security, and IT senior leadership on upcoming initiatives and approaches.
Senior Manager for Product Activation and Global Operations
Marriott
- Advised cross-functional project teams on decisions that offer operational quality and simplicity for all four property management systems, focusing on the end-user experience.
- Produced user-facing and above property support documentation to successfully deploy integrated mobile keys across 6,000 sites and four platforms.
- Created a data-driven beta selection model to identify sites best suited for executing user testing and returning actionable results.
- Prepared presentations to explain complex concepts in digestible formats for diverse audiences, including senior leadership.
Senior Manager – Americas Property Management Systems
Marriott International
- Served as a product manager for four unique property management systems (PMS) leveraged at approximately 5,500 hotels across North and South America.
- Educated business and technology leaders regarding all new in-continent PMS initiatives, impacts, and dependencies.
- Provided operational guidance to shape the vision and direction of the future of the PMS' UX, capabilities, and design.
- Partnered with multiple stakeholders to deliver chip and PIN payment systems across North America, ensuring that the solution was operationally and technically sound.
Senior Business Systems Analyst
Marriott
- Delivered requirements gathering, design approval, UAT, beta, pilots, and the deployment strategy in Agile and Waterfall SDLC methodologies.
- Served as a subject-matter expert, partnering with enterprise architecture, business, planning, build, run, learning and development, and deployment teams from across the organization, resulting in highly successful program implementation.
- Participated as a key leader, heavily involved in all aspects of the SDLC, including business process definition, design, QA, UAT, deployment, and post-production support.
- Concurrently delivered on critical PMS integration initiatives, including loyalty, reservations, payment, Salesforce CRM, and vacation ownership systems.
- Led cross-enterprise, high-profile knowledge-gathering, and issue resolution efforts in the integration command center, during impact summits, and with UX teams. I was the IT plan lead.
CRM Product Manager
Starwood Hotels and Resorts
- Led all key CRM projects, wrote business and technical requirements, approved design and QA plans, conducted UAT, and directed deployment.
- Served as the final signatory for development, QA, and deployment.
- Designed and facilitated all CRM training, including global webinars with approximately 450 unique dial-ins per month and in-person North America hubs with approximately 100 attendees per session. These sessions statistically improved usage.
- Implemented new processes and practices with a third-party vendor to successfully achieve agreed-upon SLAs.
- Ran pilots with key users globally and reported findings to enterprise-level leadership.
Project History
Property Management System Integration
I led solution creation, prioritization, and documentation for integrating Starwood's PMS into Marriott's diverse ecosystem.
When Starwood Hotels & Resorts was purchased by Marriott International for $13.3 billion, Marriott successfully completed the merger in two years, the fastest timeline ever attempted in the travel and hospitality industry. The only technology that was not retired in this merger was LightSpeed, Starwood’s proprietary PMS.
I surveyed business and technology representatives from across Marriott to identify subject-matter experts and opinion leaders. Subsequently, I brought in critical resources from around the organization to understand the capabilities, infrastructure, and inner workings of the company. I focused on building trust to collectively succeed in leading this expanded cohort of disparate teams.
Through influence and expertise, I simultaneously created, designed, prioritized, and documented the solutions for integrating LightSpeed’s technology with Marriott’s loyalty software suite to serve more than 100 million members, the reservation and payment systems, the CRM system (Salesforce), and Marriott’s vacation ownership group’s systems.
Technology used: Salesforce, proprietary PMS, reservations and payment systems, AHS and MBS technologies, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Jira, Confluence, Skype, SharePoint.
Loyalty Revenue Recovery
I drove a process audit task force that identified approximately $250 million in previously unaccounted-for revenue.
After conducting system integrations, it was quickly determined that legacy application processes were not communicating effectively with loyalty program applications. A task force was created to conduct research in hopes of identifying a technical bug.
I established research procedures, documentation processes, and cadences with stakeholders. Instead of immediately trying to identify a problem, I directed the team to focus on defining the holistic process. As a result, the team produced technical process definitions and improved reporting accuracy. We also created a log of future downstream framework needs that was used as the foundation for a new hospitality loyalty program roadmap.
The revenue had previously not been tracked because of multiple process gaps and design flaws. As we changed the technology, $250 million in previously hidden revenue was identified and tracked without a single defect.
Technology used: JIRA, Confluence, Excel, PowerPoint, SecureCRT
Product Support for a CRM System
I created and implemented new processes with a third-party vendor to achieve the contracted service level agreement for support.
The global user population was beginning to develop a negative opinion of the support that was provided for the CRM system. Support tickets were taking too long to close, were being passed from associate to associate, and many times were not being resolved at all. Support was run by a third-party provider that was under contract for the entire company.
After analyzing data on ticket volume, closure velocity, subject, and route mapping, as well as interviewing users and support team members, I presented the 10-member support team with my proposals.
We agreed upon altered processes and procedures to improve ticket routing and closure times. For example, I optimized ticket queues to drive efficiency, established a meeting cadence to answer support questions and identify repeat questions from the field to respond to holistically, and created an escalation path.
Results
- Closure rate increased by 7%
- Hours needed to close a ticket decreased by 21%
- Overdue tickets declined by 33%
Most importantly, the support team was able to successfully meet the contracted SLAs and take care of users.
Technology used: ServiceNow, PowerPoint, Excel, Adobe Connect, CRM
Education
Associate Degree in Business
Arizona State University - Tempe, AZ
Bachelor's Degree in Mass Communications and Public Relations
Arizona State University – Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication - Tempe, AZ
Certifications
Certified SAFe 5 Product Owner/Product Manager
Scaled Agile, Inc
PMP
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Salesforce Certified Administrator
Salesforce
Essential Skills for Business Analysis
B2T Training
Virtual Instructor Led Training (vILT) Certified
Adobe
Six Sigma Green Belt
The International Association for Six Sigma Certification (IASSC)
Skills
Tools
Excel 2016, Jira, Skype for Business, Microsoft Visio, Camtasia Studio, Snagit, Visio, Word 2016, Camtasia
Paradigms
Requirements Analysis, Agile, Waterfall Development, Agile Product Management, Change Management, Agile Project Management, Scrum, Testing
Industry Expertise
Hospitality
Platforms
SharePoint
Other
Salesforce, Certified Salesforce Administrator, IT Business Analysis, Systems Analysis, Business Process Analysis, Business Process Optimization, Requirements, User Requirements, Business Requirements, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Functional Requirements, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, ServiceNow, Product Management, Business Analysis, Waterfall Delivery, Software Integration, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Process Innovation, Communication, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Remote Team Leadership, Certified Trainer, Travel, Product Strategy, Product Owner, Travel & Leisure, CRM Configuration, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Property Management, CRM Design, CRM Systems, Customer Support, IT Support, Customer Service, Customer Experience, Data Analysis, Microsoft Teams, Loyalty Programs, Global Operations, SQL, Technical Product Management, Analysis, Business Cases, Adobe Connect, Microsoft, Project Management, IT Project Management, Waterfall Methodology, Release Management, Project Delivery, Deployment, Change Leadership, Team Leadership, Process Flows, Process Design, Agile Sprints, Product Roadmaps, Sprint Planning, Jira Administrator, Backlog Management, Beta Programs, Agile Transformation, Backlog Grooming, Training Content, Workshop Facilitation, Excel 2013, Sales, Marketing, Advertising, Business, Public Relations (PR), Salesforce Service Cloud, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Financial Services Cloud, Lucidchart, Wealth Management, Feature Roadmaps, Software Implementation, Product Launch, Data Integration, API Integration, Agile Practices, Agile Product Delivery, Stakeholder Management, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Vendor Management, Enterprise Design, Strategic Planning
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