Brandi Kler

Working in tandem with the company CEO, a designer and 3 developers, created a new experience while leveraging the legacy backend system. This work was completed in just 5 months.

I started with a product management engagement working in conjunction with a lead designers to flesh out the user flows and basic designs. Then, the project was converted to a Toptal project where I led the discovery and then ultimately the development and delivery phase of the project.

Working with the founder, worked through discovery and ultimately a prototype delivery for a fashion app to allow users to virtually try on clothing through a smart phone before purchasing. The aim of this prototype was to prove out the technology capabilities and generate interest from potential investors.

Led team including a designer and two developers to research technologies and make a recommendation around the best technology to use when creating this virtual try on application. And, worked with a designer to develop a Figma prototype to showcase the potential of the application for investors.

I led the Allure/Creative Realities team in bringing their flagship next generation CMS product, Clarity, to the market. This effort included market research, prototype development, software development, quality assurance as well as documentation development and training the operations team on support and implementation.

Using a primarily offshore development team, I made key contributions to move Clarity from concept to market, including serving different roles throughout the development process: Product management leader, scrum master, product owner, trainer, and pre-sales support. Clarity Content Management System is Creative Realities’ SaaS-based CMS and HTML client, designed to support large-scale digital signage network management. This product is currently deployed and serving over 600 customers.

This point-of-sale product was successful in mid-to-large theaters in the US and was deployed to about 500 cinemas. The scope of the product included ticket sales, concession sales, and kiosks. This product was integrated for credit with Verifone and with accounting systems on the back end to allow for a single entry at close.

I had product management responsibility for the product. I worked directly with key customers to understand their pain points and improve features or add new modules to the product. For example, after hearing from several customers the importance of gift cards, we created a module that allowed them to issue and accept gift cards from the point of sale. During my time with this product, it was nearing the end of the software lifecycle. I helped the company evaluate the market opportunity and ultimately, we decided to maintain the product and then eventually end of life. In order to meet profitability requirements, we move the software maintenance offshore to a team in India.

I launched a next-generation video-on-demand provisioning platform for cable and telcos. This was a replacement for an existing, outdated system. It required a deep understanding of user tasks and workflows. Using mostly qualitative data, we re-envisioned this product for users.

I led the team of product managers responsible for the complex ecosystem of content management, business management, and asset management associated with delivering video on demand to cable and telecoms. The product was ultimately used by several large cable operators (Charter, Comcast, Rogers) and telcos (Verizon) to deliver video on demand to their customers.

I led the product design and development for a digital interactive species ID platform for the award-winning Scaly Slimy Spectacular at Zoo Atlanta. I worked with Zoo Atlanta (the client), the Allure/CRI design team, and an offshore development team to define and develop an Android-based touch-screen application for reptile species identification kiosks for the zoo. This web-based application is displayed on hardened touch screens that operate like a kiosk. There are about 80 kiosks in the reptile exhibit for zoo visitors to utilize. The content on the kiosk is all served from a web-based content management system where content is updated and maintained by zookeepers and other zoo staff.

My role was working with a fully offshore team to develop this MVP for theater ushers. This was tested in our largest theater customer but, ultimately, did not get developed further because of the operational support associated with managing and maintaining iPhones/devices at each theater. The mobile application for theater ticket takers was to scan ticket barcodes and to call for assistance for emergencies or cleaning requests. The app interacted with the point of sale system to pull data about showtimes, tickets sold, and other relevant details. It was integrated with the Infinite Peripherals barcode scanner and provided a record of tickets taken for a given show.

I project managed the migration of two production and two staging environments from Rackspace Managed Service to Amazon Web Services. The key success metrics included the successful migration of over 2,500 'endpoints' which needed to be remotely migrated to the new environment. I successfully led a cross-functional team from systems engineering to development, implementation, and help desk. This project was completed successfully in early 2020 and resulted in a savings of 50% of hosting fees amounting to over $40,000/year.

Working with a software provider to the solar energy space, I created a go-to-market sales presentation and made suggestions for UX enhancements to genericize the software to target the larger addressable market. I also worked with the team to develop a roadmap to help generate customer dialogue to assist in prioritizing future development.