Charles is available for hire
Hire CharlesCharles Wigand
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Location
Nashville, TN, United States
Toptal Member Since
November 9, 2018
Chuck has been building and managing digital products for startups and enterprises, like IHS Markit, for over 20 years. By combining his project management experience with his product management expertise, Chuck's clients get the full landscape perspective that exceeds their expectations. He typically reports directly to senior leadership, having honed the skills for direct, efficient, and accurate reporting for their needs.
Project Highlights
Uniguest | Product Lifecycle Foundation
Created the foundation and processes to allow the business to scale from five to 32 products while maintaining congruency.
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Saved a projected 50% of data processing costs with Amazon Mechanical Turk.
XOi Vision | Wearables
Successfully launched an Android app modified for the RealWear HMT-1.
Expertise
Work Experience
Senior Product Manager
2022 - 2022
JLL - JLLT Core
- Established the roadmap and the strategy for a new product offering in the UK.
- Aligned with multiple diverse stakeholders around the world to the product and business vision.
- Successfully established the product offering with first-year revenue projections in the millions.
Senior Product Manager
2021 - 2022
Giant Machines Software LLC - Main
- Led the restructuring of product and development processes used for one of their premier clients.
- Established an efficient line of communication between development and the business allowing deadlines to be achieved.
- Mentored senior developers and product managers to continue future product phases.
Head of Product
2019 - 2020
Systemate.com
- Worked with the CEO (founder) to develop the product vision and outlined the MVP and feature roadmap.
- Hired and managed the development and design teams and led the building of the MVP.
- Led other departments into creating a product-driven culture for the business.
Director of Product Development
2018 - 2020
Uniguest Inc
- Oversaw a product portfolio of 32 products across seven platforms, which includes software, hardware, channel partnerships, and a value-added reseller.
- Interviewed customers and users on needs and expectations for products and experiences they expect, which allowed me to run R&D for developing new customer-centric products.
- Developed business line offerings that allow our customers, and the business, to drive new revenue through targeted research and strong industry relationships.
- Implemented a product lifecycle process that gives visibility to the business into the software development lifecycle, hardware lifecycle, and value-added reseller (VAR) relationships and offerings.
- Established the product department from scratch, based on a solid foundation of processes to manage and grow software, hardware, and VAR relationships and allow the business to effectively acquire new complementary businesses.
Director of Products
2017 - 2018
XOi Technologies
- Led the product and engineering teams through the growth and maintenance phases of the company’s current products (web, iOS, Android, wearables).
- Gathered business and user requirements to strategize the roadmap for a complete rebuild of the product suite.
- Developed, via targeted communications with customers and integration partners, a new go-to-market strategy to allow the company to scale, meet revenue goals, and perform for their investors.
- Constructed the model and process that increased the number of platforms the company integrated with from three to eleven which was core to the business.
- Implemented the use of Amazon Mechanical Turks to improve the company's OCR and NLP processing by creating validated customer data that allowed machine learning models to be trained.
Director of Product and Data Channel Partnerships
2013 - 2017
IHS Markit
- Developed partnerships to strategize software product roadmaps with channel partners for integrating PIERS data into their product suites to create enhanced customer offerings.
- Analyzed and secured market drivers doubling existing partnerships in 2013 by establishing scalable growth model which utilized direct sale and revenue share models.
- Exceeded Q1 2016 revenue quota by 224% and tripled 2013 revenue in 2014.
- Initiated and closed 2014’s largest revenue deal which was the second largest in company history.
Director of Product Management
2011 - 2013
PIERS
- Led technology product groups through an initial company transformation phase with the sunsetting of legacy offerings and migration of customers to new, purpose-built software offerings.
- Worked directly with sales leadership to open new markets for lead generation SAS products in new verticals which led to a 24% annual increase in revenue.
- Grew the annual subscription revenue $100,000 within the first three months and increased customer retention by 25% through expanded capabilities and targeted product builds.
- Developed a business plan and led the creation of ImporterExporterLeads.com, the company’s first eCommerce presence (built on Heroku with Salesforce)—resulting in first-year revenues of more than $250,000.
- Created multiple sales channels and a white-label program, expanding the reach of customer opportunities, which comprised 30% of site revenues.
Senior Product Consultant
2010 - 2011
PIERS
- Served, post-acquisition, on a four-member executive management team that designed and implemented business strategies to transform the business and culture into a more lean, profitable and investor-friendly organization.
- Led product managers to revise the existing product roadmaps and move to an Agile environment.
- Handled the tech teams migrating CenTradeX data and software to the PIERS environments.
President
2008 - 2010
CenTradeX
- Drove the company vision and all aspects of business including product development and technology, sales, marketing, and accounting.
- Positioned and negotiated for the acquisition of the company’s software and team by industry leader PIERS after they experienced increased customer attrition due to our targeted software solutions.
- Formed digital product joint venture with a complementary business partner that led to six presales in eight weeks of a beta product which was created to test the new market’s solution acceptance.
Vice President of Product Development and IT
2006 - 2008
CenTradeX
- Handled and was responsible for all aspects of product development/management, technology, and the development team.
- Created a flexible web software data delivery platform which improved the responsiveness to market changes and the ability to capitalize on immediate opportunities.
- Redefined a more profitable market position by collaborating with sales, marketing, and existing customer base to develop new, needs-based products which resulted in a steady 33% growth.
Owner
2002 - 2005
Kredo Teknologies
- Consulted with startup CEOs and small business owners to develop product roadmaps and go-to-market strategies for technology-based products across various industries.
- Developed and analyzed market data—creating action-oriented plans which drove informed business growth and operations decisions.
- Managed the development of business applications and services while in close collaboration with internal/customer development and marketing teams resulting in multiple end products that were eventually acquired by Yahoo, Ticketmaster, and MedAssets.
Senior Product Manager
2000 - 2002
Alliance Software
- Became the lead liaison with the company's largest clients due to my personal technical skills and ability to work on a personal level with clients.
- Was specifically requested by three of the company’s largest clients to manage their accounts and projects.
- Handled the full project lifecycle, including requirements gathering, scope development, proposal, application architecture, resource allocation, application development, quality assurance, implementation, and enhancement management.
Software Consultant at HCA Healthcare
1999 - 2000
Robert Half Technologies
- Worked closely with the client to determine the needs, then planned and built an interactive web-based calendar for scheduling and approving corporate network downtimes by the IT support department. The calendar was used company-wide to keep managers and users updated on the status of their networks.
- Acted as a project manager and senior developer in creating an HR executive profiling web application used by corporation presidents to gather biographical information of top executives for hospitals under their management. Under my direction, the project was successfully finished in half the time originally budgeted.
Software Consultant
1999 - 1999
Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group - DRT Systems
- Converted a website of static content pages that needed to be maintained by programmers to one that used dynamic database content maintained by content owners, now known as a content management system (CMS.) This was the first time Deloitte & Touche had implemented this kind of system for their sites that supported top clients like General Motors.
- Developed enhancements for an in-house project and resource management system that merged the functionality of Microsoft Project with custom-built components to enable project information to be viewed and managed over the internet. This project was Deloitte's answer to MS Project server before Microsoft released that product.
Project History
Uniguest | Product Lifecycle Foundation
http://www.uniguest.comCreated the foundation and processes to allow the business to scale from five to 32 products while maintaining congruency.
The business had no formal product process for creating new or managing existing products. This put a strain on the business while they wanted to increase the pace of their acquisition strategy. Creating the foundation and building the team to evolve the processes has given the business the confidence to grow from 25,000 assets in 14,000 properties to more than 33,000 assets in over 16,000 properties in nine months. And the business can continue on its aggressive growth strategy.
XOi Vision | Mobile Legacy
Managed the releases for a live product for field technicians.
Led the product and engineering team through the growth and maintenance phases of the company’s current products (web, iOS, Android, wearables).
XOi | Plan Rebuild of the Core Platform
Developed a product requirements document for the platform rebuild.
Working with stakeholders, customer interviews, and a design partner, planned the rebuild of a legacy/MVP platform to allow the business to better scale utilizing an integration strategy for channel partnerships. This planning ended with a PRD that included high-level architecture diagrams, UI wireframes, use cases, epics with initial user stories for new MVP, and strategy focus on initial sales targets and marketing concepts.
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Saved a projected 50% of data processing costs with Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Implemented the use of Amazon Mechanical Turk to improve the company's OCR and NLP processing by creating validated customer data that allowed machine learning models to be trained.
XOi Vision | Wearables
Successfully launched an Android app modified for the RealWear HMT-1.
Managed the vendor relationships and the development team to create XOi Vision software product on the RealWear HMT-1.
Education
1991 - 1993
Associate of Applied Science Degree in Computer Aided Design (CAD)
ITT Technical Institute - Nashville, TN, USA
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