Barny Ritchley
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since September 13, 2022
Barny is a successful product leader with over 17 years of experience, specializing in monetizing technology products and services from innovation to fully considered business strategies. His deep understanding of technology and process importance led to impressive commercial gains within B2B and B2C SaaS markets. Barny's outstanding business experience and understanding of financial models enable him to quickly prioritize high-impact objectives, delivering transformational growth.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- CTO
- Cloud
- Financial Modeling
- Interim CPO
- Product Management
- Product Strategy
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- User Experience (UX)
Work Experience
CTO Product Manager
Callroute
- Established a SaaS growth business serving B2B and B2C customers, hiring and managing product development, DevOps, and engineering teams. Defined the product roadmap—including commercial and product strategy—serving tens of thousands of subscribers.
- Wrote and implemented a cloud-native SaaS strategy's business plan, securing the initial seed and further series-A funding from established VCs. Exceeded business performance goals, scaling the product and service to Fortune 500 companies and SMEs.
- Refined the product positioning using quantitative data analysis, assessing the value proposition against industry trends, customer insight, and sentiment, continuing the explosive growth exceeding industry growth rates.
- Established new sales programs for channel partners demonstrating customer value, tied with customer success, while monitoring and adjusting them to achieve a defined growth plan.
CTO Product Manager
sipsynergy
- Owned the definition of service delivery, consumption models, and the growth strategy targeting a cloud UC's uptake within SMEs through B2B channels. Boosted sales conversion by 37% through simplified pricing models and a customer-centric approach.
- Developed and refined the product roadmap in close collaboration with Cisco, ensuring the alignment of strategy and vision with Cisco’s partner channel.
- Led product development and business strategy working with B2B partner customers, regulatory bodies, and global service providers, signing over 40 revenue-producing partners within six months.
- Supported business growth through technical oversight, fostering and coaching technical teams, and establishing close, customer-facing cooperation with stakeholders while delivering major customer projects through cross-functional team leadership.
CTO Product Manager
SectorSix
- Led agile software development teams, providing operational support, technical knowledge, service delivery support, and strategic planning to scale and build products against technology vision and defined outcomes.
- Successfully secured patents granted in the UK, USA, and Europe.
- Gained Cisco accreditation for the MTVM product. This was the first product approved as part of the OPA program, specifically designed for Cisco HCS architecture management.
- Implemented an agile CI/CD development methodology, leading software development and DevOps teams to transform a monolith platform into a scalable microservice architecture, while defining customer priorities as part of sprint and epic cycles.
Product Director
Exeye
- Won projects for multiple clients, owning and developing the product roadmap to bring to market and deliver various software projects.
- Refined and scaled a software platform serving eight million daily active users with full-scale eCommerce and payment integrations.
- Led a team of eight developers, project managers, and solution architects, working closely with account managers and delivering multiple customer projects within time and budget.
IT Director
Conservatorybuy
- Developed and refined manufacturing software enabling the electronic transmission of orders from the design studio directly to the supplier and manufacturer shop floor.
- Increased supplier discounts resulting from a reduced order overhead and zero-touch manufacturing that exceeded other suppliers' discount levels in the industry.
- Slashed order lead times to three days through the addition of an automated customer interface, while guiding people on regulatory requirements and eliminating manual order processing.
Project History
New SaaS Product Establishment
Led the creation of a new SaaS product serving 42,000 subscribers and gaining $750,000 annual recurring revenue within the first six months of production.
Built the business and go-to-market strategy for a new multi-cloud SaaS product, hiring the software development, engineering, and customer success teams. This included:
• Defining the product roadmap, including commercial and product strategy
• Leading the entire product lifecycle, transitioning from the proof of concept and prototypes through MVP toward a distributed scalable architecture with automated tooling, serving tens of thousands of subscribers
• Building and managing teams, including developers, engineering, service assurance, and solution architects, delivering an automated multi-cloud platform spanning 14 countries, leveraging local and contract offshore resources
• Exceeding business performance objectives, scaling the business and product to a profitable growth
• Defining UI/UX improvements and process efficiencies with a focus on customer experience and frictionless automation.
ISP as a Service Built
Ran the product development for a new innovative service provider offered as a service, generating $22,000,000 of new revenue.
Led product development and business strategy for an ISP as a service, working with B2B partner customers, regulatory bodies, and global service providers, signing over 40 revenue-producing partners within six months. This included:
• Accountability for product vision, strategic direction, customer service, quality assurance, cloud engineering, and development teams
• Cisco-accredited service provider network and infrastructure deployment, generating $22,000,000 of new revenue
• Accomplishing Cisco cloud managed service provider (CMSP) and advanced collaboration architecture specialization (ACAS) status
• Supporting business growth through technical oversight, fostering and coaching technical teams, and engaging in close cooperation with stakeholders
• Customer-facing, delivering major customer projects through the leadership of a cross-functional team
• Growing revenues by 400% over five years, focusing on defensible market value and product relevance within the B2B landscape.
Multi-patented UCaaS Platform
Managed the entire product lifecycle from conception, securing patents for intellectual property in the UK, USA, and Europe.
Led the product management of MTVM, gaining Cisco accreditation for the first product approved as part of the OPA program designed explicitly for Cisco HCS architecture management. This included:
• Managing agile software development teams, providing operational support, technical knowledge, service delivery support, and strategic planning to scale and build products against technology vision and defined outcomes
• Implementing an agile CI/CD development methodology
• Leading software development and DevOps teams to transform a monolith platform into a scalable microservices architecture
• Defining customer priorities as part of sprint and epic cycles
• Managing stakeholder requirements, including distilling feedback within retrospectives as part of the product management cycle
This work granted patents in the UK, USA, and Europe and won projects for global tier-one service providers across four continents.
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Cisco Unified Communications Management Suite, Atlassian Suite, Slack, Trello, MURAL, Asana, Google Ad Manager, Google Analytics
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Agile Project Management, Requirements Analysis, Agile, Mobile App Design, Acceptance Testing, Kanban
Industry Expertise
Marketplaces, Telecommunications, Consumer Finance, Music
Platforms
Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Blockchain
Other
Software as a Service (SaaS), CTO, Product Management, Product Strategy, Financial Modeling, Interim CPO, Cloud, User Experience (UX), Unified Communications, Finance, Leadership, Software, Cloud Services, Project Management, Software Design, App Development, Cisco, Product Development, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Product Roadmaps, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Use Cases, Web Applications, Business Strategy, Data Analytics, Product Design, New Product Development, Product Strategy Consultant, Digital Product Management, Digital Product Development, Growth, Product Growth, Business Cases, New Product Business Cases, Market Strategy and Research Product Manager, Market Research, Communication, Business Models, Technical Project Management, User Flows, System Requirements, Requirements, Conceptualization, Ideation, Roadmaps, MVP Design, Product Launch, Go-to-market Plans, Go-to-market (GTM) Strategy, Monetization Models, Monetization, Revenue Strategy, Revenue Modeling, Website Traffic, Software Consulting, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Product Delivery, SaaS, Product Marketing, SaaS Product Marketing, Sales Enablement, Enterprise SaaS, SaaS Product Management, Go-to-market Optimization, Growth Strategy, Growth Marketing Product Manager, Strategy, Business to Consumer (B2C), eCommerce, Accounting, Data Analysis, Consumer Applications, Project Planning, Project Timelines, Discovery Workshops, Stakeholder Management, Team Leadership, Web & Mobile Applications, User Stories, Presentations, Negotiation, Estimations, Solution Architecture, Business Planning, Startups, Pricing Strategy, Revenue & Expense Projections, Value Proposition, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Functional Requirements, Data-driven Decision-making, Cost Estimation, Estimation & Planning, Relational Databases, Databases, APIs, Early-stage Startups, Business Analysis, Microsoft Excel, Market Fit, B2B, Partnerships, Product Discovery, Web Scraping, Growth Marketing, Digital Marketing, User Interface (UI), Digital Experience Design, iOS, Android, Digital Campaigns, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Email Campaigns, Management Consulting, Market Research & Analysis, Operations, Operations Management, Google Apps, WordPress, Customer Experience, Mobile UX, Mobile Applications, Mobile Apps, A/B Testing, Experimental Design, Data-informed Decisions, Statistical Data Analysis, Hypothesis Testing, Media, Audio Streaming, Consulting, Technical Consulting, New Products & Services, Feasibility Studies, Business Plan Consulting, Pitch Presentations, Pitch Decks, Cross-functional Collaboration, Inventory Management Systems, Supply Chain Management (SCM)
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