Chris Barron

Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM), the pioneer in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, once dominated that market. Although commonly thought of as a self-service platform, a large number of small advertisers supported a market floor, while the largest advertisers fueled top-line revenue growth. Large accounts expected white-glove service from day one. Unfortunately, YSM’s growth outpaced many of the internal systems used to support daily operations.

I joined during this time, taking ownership of parts of the advertiser experience involving sales-generating RFPs on-demand for clients. Working hand-in-hand with operations, I led a small team that replaced a largely manual sales proposal application with one that automated pricing and ROI forecasting, integrated with internal workflow management, allowed customized branding and translation by each of over 20 global markets, and also tracked metrics for performance.

The system allowed RFPs to be returned in hours, and new ad campaigns could go live within minutes of client approval. With the enhanced sales proposal system, over 160,000 sales proposals were generated annually, lifting over $1 million in daily revenue.

Oracle Discoverer started as a desktop application designed to let business users create their own reports and analyze data without needing help from IT.

I joined the product management team right as Oracle pivoted to embrace internet-enabled products. I was responsible for many of the features of Discoverer in the Java and thin-clients, completely owning the integration with Oracle Portal and OracleiAS from concept to launch, and helping teammates lead the integration with Oracle’s ERP products.

I traveled the globe speaking at conferences, visiting key customers, and training sales and support in the field while working with development teams in Silicon Valley, the UK, and Bangalore. I also managed customer escalations, liaising with SVP Sohaib Abbasi and CEO Larry Ellison.

By the time I left Oracle, Discoverer had grown from $25M to over $75M in annual revenue. It also successfully transitioned from a desktop tool to a business-critical BI platform integrated with Oracle’s flagship ERP and RDBMS products and used by top-tier customers worldwide.

A client fell over a year behind schedule for a new service to determine the best available drug price for members. This was a major pain point because the price for members is based on the insurer, pharmacy, location, and other relevant factors.

The business strategy had been to deliver the features needed to replace existing pricing systems across multiple production systems, both customer-facing and internally-facing, all in the initial launch. However, rules from multiple partners and providers made this extremely complicated and beyond what any subject matter expert could design. And mounting delays led to repeated turnover in product leadership.

I worked with the latest product manager and product owners to refocus the strategy and roadmap. Collaborated with other business leaders and prioritized which existing systems to replace in what order and further prioritize the needs of each one.

I also led SAFe PI planning and trained project managers to take ownership.
By the time I left, the roadmap was revamped; the product management, project management, and development teams were on a self-sustaining cadence; and the product and the product manager were recognized internally as examples of business agility.