Benedikt Glatzl

Hi.health is a convenient, connected payment solution to ease the process of paying and reimbursing health expenses and to help health insurance customers access the best health solutions and services available.

I played a key role in creating the hi.health service from the very beginning, and then supported the app from serving its very first customer to acquiring tens of thousands of customers and onboarding several B2B partners. In order to create the service, I gained an in-depth understanding of the German and Austrian health insurance sectors, the business models of connected healthcare service providers, and custom-built payment instruments.

During the development lifecycle, I conducted user research, created the product vision, developed UX drafts, produced wireframes, managed developers to create the MVP, and then coordinated the creation of the actual service. I was also involved in building the tech and product team by hiring and training several product owners, a tech lead, and front-end and back-end developers.

Ticketlens aggregates all tours and activities from the world's biggest tour and activities providers and makes it easy to compare them. Users can find the best tickets, tours, and activities and compare prices from different websites.

The client wanted to automate the entire healthcare expense management process, from expense occurrence to reimbursement. I led the design and implementation of a custom-made payment solution that could coordinate payments in a "triangle relationship" between healthcare service providers, customers, and insurances.

In order to architect the concept for this payment product, I evaluated different payment providers from a commercial, technical, and UX perspective. Created mockups to illustrate how a payment flow with the respective provider would work. Specified the core elements of the solution, developed an implementation roadmap, and oversaw the implementation.

I coordinated the search ads fraud and spam prevention efforts for the German Mark. To do this, I devised a strategy consisting of a mix of workflow improvements, contractor management process changes, and optimization of both conditional rule-based and machine learning-based automated filtering and categorization systems. This was accomplished while keeping the false positive and false negative rates at a nearly unchanged level.

I served as the main product strategist in the project to implement the settlement proposal. This involved close collaboration with the global legal council to identify requirements and with senior technical staff across products and geographic locations to translate them into technical specs for large-scale internet products and design a roadmap for implementation.

CityMaps2Go is one of the leading city travel app suites with more than 20 million downloads globally. Since the app was focused on user growth for a number of years, I was tasked with monetizing the userbase in order to bring the company to profitability.

First, I conducted an in-depth evaluation of all the features of the app and how they could be monetized without hurting retention, where paywalls could be introduced, and how the in-app purchases and subscriptions could be priced.

In collaboration with the developers and analysts, I ran several A/B tests to see which features could be best monetized, how they would be bundled in price tiers, and what the optimal price points were. I then worked with a designer and a marketing expert to create the communications around the purchases inside and outside the app. Finally, I oversaw the launch of the monetization, including taking care of users who fell into a grace period with their purchases and app versions.

In addition to increasing the monetization rate of the userbase from 1.5% to nearly 10%, revenue tripled while keeping maintenance costs at the same level as before.

I conceived, developed, and implemented a global program to tackle the toughest problems faced by the product quality department of one of the world's largest tech companies. I used an adaptation of design thinking to do this in an innovative way.

I trained 12 design thinking facilitators across locations and cultures, delivered tailormade workshops and design sprints (with more than 250 participants in total), and deployed projects globally across Google locations. The design sprints led to the creation of a webmaster troubleshooting center used by millions of webmasters and new ways of tackling product fraud effectively.

I received the bi-annual "Global Invaluable Innovator" award for the creation of this program.

For the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, I designed and (for over six years) delivered the content for the mandatory seminar on applied innovation methods. The seminar spans over two to three months and requires the students to apply the learned methods immediately to real-world projects conceived in collaboration with local companies and institutions.

The program covers design thinking, Agile methods, and Lean Startup methods, and culminates in a prototype presentation and startup pitch. The course was initially delivered fully in person, but I adapted it to be delivered 100% virtually due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

The client (a global hardware provider for data centers) wanted to develop a new data center product line and felt that their classical R&D approach was insufficient for this initiative.

As part of an innovation consultancy, I was tasked with designing a process to accomplish this while involving lead users. I designed the process, interviewed and recruited data center owners globally into an innovator community, and led a four-day design thinking workshop with R&D staff and select data center owners to come up with new solutions to existing problems.

To strengthen the local startup ecosystem, I brought a globally recognized, pre-seed startup accelerator program to the region. This involved recruiting mentors, trainers, and participants; hosting PR events on relevant topics; coaching the startups; and coordinating and monitoring the program deadlines.

Designed and delivered a global education program to create excitement and buy-in from senior executives across markets and functions. This was crucial in establishing a novel innovation strategy in a large FMCG company that had never carried out digital innovation initiatives.

To enable a large multinational company to create disruptive innovations unhampered by corporate bureaucracy and politics, I was tasked with designing a concept for a digital venture builder organization. I was also tasked with prototyping the first iteration of the venture building process by creating a concept and a functioning MVP for this concept. I pitched the Venture Builder to senior executives of the company. I received approval for creating such an entity with an initial budget of $30 million, which was subsequently implemented as per my plan.

The company started as an education and professional development provider for professionals in the formal education sector. Due to COVID-19, their entire business model collapsed as F2F coaching was not possible anymore.

In this project, we entirely transformed both their business model and service offering by first reviewing their existing business model and mapping out their core assets and USP. We then remapped these onto alternative business models, set up MVPs around each of the potential ways forward, and created online campaigns to validate each of the MVPs.

After validating the two most promising service offerings, we set out to build out the service portfolio, which enabled the company to now be a thriving and expanding business with more than doubled revenues within a year.

The startup's idea was to create a novel platform for digital freelancers to help small businesses in the Middle East enter the digital age and supercharge their business. The founders needed support in defining their product concept further down to a product and business roadmap and sharpening their business model. Over several weeks I created strategy and implementation documents for each aspect of the business, culminating in a business plan and an application for a renowned incubator program to which they successfully applied.

As the project lead for a groundbreaking digital transformation initiative at a large FMCG corporation, I spearheaded the development and implementation of advanced toolsets for the efficient processing and analysis of research data. This project marked a significant departure from the company's traditional document storage practices, embracing a more dynamic and scalable approach.

Leveraging a diverse array of state-of-the-art methodologies and technologies—including machine learning, generative AI, and sophisticated data analytics tools—my team and I successfully engineered various innovative tools. These tools are adept at autonomously summarizing documents and datasets, extracting useful metadata, constructing thematic networks across various documents, identifying potential areas for research, and uncovering cross-correlations with other internal or external datasets and document contents.

As the principal architect of this project, I orchestrated the collaboration of a skilled team comprising designers, data scientists, analysts, and AI specialists. Together, we not only crafted these revolutionary tools but also championed their adoption throughout the organization.