Alexandru Băduț

The mobile application enabled users to place and pay an order before reaching the restaurant to pick it up and earn rewards for skip-the-queue orders and retail transactions. The rewards model was designed to stimulate the order frequency of the restaurant chain customers.

Key challenges included:
• Scoping the project by documenting user stories and functional specifications and coordinating the product team throughout the implementation
• Designing a user experience that followed mobile design patterns while aligning it with digital brand guidelines
• Selecting and implementing a Bluetooth beacon solution for triggering orders when the user is in the restaurant's proximity
• Designing the process for the mobile orders (e.g., users had to know when the order was ready for pick up from a separate counter area)
• Documenting and implementing a user acceptance testing plan
• Stress-testing the AWS cloud infrastructure for high-demand conditions

The mobile application has exceeded one million downloads in a market with a total population size of almost ten million.

The hotel and restaurant industry is heavily impacted by aggregators specializing in digital customer acquisition while commissioning revenues and owning the customer relationship.

I envisioned a product to help hotel and restaurant chains stimulate transaction frequency by following their previous guests' preferences regarding communication topics and past transaction content. This enabled the hotel marketing team to address the customer segments such as budget-conscious families or affluent couples by focusing marketing communication (email, SMS, and website) on their past stays data (type of room, nights, and season) and dining data and previous reactions to marketing communication.

The competitive set did not include software products that leveraged hotel stay data and restaurant checks data, which were equally relevant in profiling the customer.

Key challenges included:
• Performing customer discovery for learning about hotel and restaurant challenges
• Defining the product strategy for iterating in the market
• Estimating and budgeting the scope from the get-go to the first release delivery
• Documenting user stories and functional specifications
• Coordinating the design and implementation of the product

Evertoys is a startup in the Romanian market that promotes the responsible purchase of toys and books. They enable parents and children to try out expensive toys so they can decide if the child enjoys that particular item.

Key challenges included:
• Running discovery sessions to understand how their existing and past customers make decisions on buying the subscription
• Recruiting an external designer and front-end developer and coordinating with their back-end developer
• Performing wireframes for an improved UX covered: learning about available toys, the subscription benefits activating the subscription, and month-to-month self-service
• Documenting user stories and functional specs for overall front-end development and analytics integration
• Coordinating the design and development of the new offering and the improved onboarding flow
• Revising the revenue model from four different subscriptions to a more straightforward base subscription with add-ons, running projections of how to reshape the monthly revenue due to the disruption.
• Iterating the new experience based on funnel analysis and click-and-scroll heat maps for web and mobile

Led the design and development of a SaaS eCommerce platform for food ordering and delivery featuring a web asset, a mobile application for iOS and Android, and a call-center component using the same CRM database.

Following the success in the Romanian market, we were approached by the Cyprus franchisee to implement the same capabilities. At the same time, we addressed some local market requirements like particular up-sell rules, advanced discount capabilities, and reward model implementation.

Key challenges included:
• Tailoring Pizza Hut's design system for local market requirements
• Performing operational integration for each delivery center
• Integrating MICROS POS software
• Migrating data for delivery addresses and existing customer data
• Optimizing the conversion rate

Soleadify is a data-as-a-service startup providing company profiling services for Fortune 500 companies. Their software capabilities are entirely machine learning-driven.

The activation challenge we faced consisted of users filtering their data too narrow, so their first search experience was not great. Most of these users did not attempt to change the search terms and churned, unhappy with the low number of results.

I proposed different solutions and settled for the one that proved the most positive outcome: It involved gradually showing results for each new search term added and reorganizing the information architecture. This solution made apparent to the user that some terms were more critical than others and that fine-grain terms might result in a much narrower result dataset.

Key activities included:
• Configuring Google Data Studio to monitor activation rates
• Preparing wireframes for the revised UX
• Hiring and managing an external contractor for product design
• Documenting user stories and functional specifications
• Managing the iterative delivery
• Revising product marketing assets
• Drafting email campaigns and designing Intercom onboarding tours

The company is a key player in Romania's well-being market that sells fresh liquid diet programs and vegetarian meals to an audience that wants to lead a healthier lifestyle.

They were using OpenCart, which had to be further developed to accommodate a custom delivery schedule selection. This custom development was not entirely mobile-friendly and was difficult to configure on the operations side. I proposed to migrate to Shopify after researching the required add-ons and customizations.

Key challenges included:
• Performing business analysis to learn about how demand is attracted and how orders are processed and shipped
• Configuring the product catalog, shipping rules, and payment integration
• Integrating Zapier to have an easier Google Sheets-based management of incoming orders
• Configuring a marketing automation app for cart abandonment and stimulating customer retention
• Projecting revenue vs. cost for a "free-shipping" experiment that ultimately resulted in a 10% net increase in sales
• Editing the theme to feature additional content promoting the products
• Using SEMrush to enhance the SEO ranking of the eCommerce website, leading to an increase in sales from organic search

DNATA is a global company founded in 1959 in Dubai that operates catering and cargo services and ground handling in more than 50 international airports, including the Henri Coanda Bucharest International Airport.

The company was interested in delivering digital value to the Romanian traveler, ultimately seeking to attract them to purchase food in their F&B outlets.

After performing customer discovery throughout my network, I learned that the average traveler has a constant emotional pressure not to lose their flight.

Key challenges included:
• Designing, testing, and developing solutions that would allow the traveler to track any change made to their flight
• Delivering UX design that would attract users with enough time for their flight boarding to consider having a snack in any of the airport's F&B outlet
• Designing a rewards model that featured different discount tiers for the F&B outlets and rewarded past F&B transactions and in-app behavior
• Providing software integration to the airport's flight tracking system
• Briefing and coordinating with a brand agency to create a digital mobile brand and to design all the airport materials
• Training the operational personnel to apply discount codes to mobile app users

Siebel CRM was purchased as an enterprise solution to implement uncapped time and material (T&M) relationship projects. As a project leader, I avoided budget over-run and successfully delivered the entire scope.

Key challenges included:
• Phasing a vast scope in three releases to better manage the scope and deliver value iteratively
•Providing change management and adoption challenges because of the "big brother effect" within the sales organization. I became a change champion, always promoting the benefits while being honest about the cost with the business owners
• Started organizing prototype-based discovery sessions so that business owners could see the standard functionality and formulate requirements effortlessly instead of eliciting requirements
• Coordinating external vendors for the Siebel CRM integration with ERP accounts receivable, billing, credit collection, and fleet authorization through an IBM WebSphere middleware solution
• Cleaning and migrating data from the moment that the CRM became a master data system for business accounts
• Coordinating with Siebel consultants from different cultures, including the UK, Germany, Austria, Spain, India, and Italy