Fouad El-Qassem
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Toptal member since July 18, 2019
Along with launching a variety of successful consumer and business products over the past 20 years, Fouad is a subject matter expert in marketing technologies and customer loyalty programs. With experience in working with local and remote teams, Fouad's leveraged his expertise to lead cross-functional teams of over 30 people delivering products for clients in banking, retail, telecom, travel, and other industries.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Data Analytics
- Financial Modeling
- Leadership
- Loyalty Management
- Product Management
- Product Strategy
- User Experience (UX)
Work Experience
Founder and CEO
Appresh
- Developed an MVP for a unique gifting platform to allow people to express appreciation in a simple and meaningful way from their preferred messaging apps.
- Engaged with several suppliers and brands to integrate with their systems to source different products.
- Built the financial model for the whole business with complete details for a period of five years showing ROI and financial impact on different growth scenarios.
COO
Munero Global Loyalty
- Led the product roadmap for the core eGift card distribution platform.
- Led the operations team to fulfill orders for multiple eCommerce fulfillment centers.
- Developed a three-year business strategy to drive business growth and customer-centricity for various products.
- Structured, hired, and led a fully remote product development team.
Founder | Chief Executive Officer
City Points
- Developed the full business plan and feasibility study for the product.
- Developed and owned the customer loyalty product for the City Points program.
- Managed the underlying blockchain platform to enable the real-time customer experience.
Global Program Development Manager
Etihad Airways
- Built the strategy and operational infrastructure; completed the planning and tendering structure for the product development of global online earn and burn propositions for loyalty programs.
- Designed a centralized partner operations hub, rolled out a Salesforce CRM platform, and led the implementation of an accrual-and-redemptions travel shop.
- Constructed a global product management strategy and tendering process for loyalty and airline ancillary services, including online purchases, gifting, and transference of loyalty currency.
- Built strong cross-functional relationships, including a collaboration with finance, marketing, and IT, to develop and present business cases to key GLC and Etihad Airlines Partners group stakeholders.
- Developed a partnership strategy and created the structure for implementing a global coalition loyalty product portfolio across four frequent flyer programs, including Etihad Guest, Topbonus, MilleMiglia, and JetPrivilege.
- Generated the business development pipeline and processes; devised a unified global partner value proposition.
Loyalty Services Director
Aimia, Inc.
- Generated more than 500% growth in profit for the business in the Middle East region.
- Spearheaded the transformation of the business culture by establishing and promoting performance-driven and transparent culture, employee empowerment, trust, accountability, team building, and engagement.
- Designed, developed, and managed innovative, high-quality B2B and B2C products and services; introduced new real-time earn and burn consequences resulting in more than 40% customer spend penetration for the largest electronics retailer in the region.
- Brought operational precision and efficiency to the Middle East region's campaign management, loyalty platform, operations, digital marketing, program office, technical marketing, data services, and contact center departments.
- Employed unique problem-solving skills and techniques to come up with breakthrough solutions.
- Coached, trained, and mentored high-performing cross-functional remote and local teams.
- Led the region's end-to-end product development, management, strategy, and roadmaps from ideation to going live.
- Enhanced the digital innovation strategy by completing the planning phase for the regional loyalty identification and tracking mechanism strategy to enable innovative product development, including a mobile cardless loyalty scheme.
Director of IT and Operations
Aimia, Inc.
- Built a new digital department from scratch, brought function in-house, and recruited high-performing staff. Increased visitor traffic and customer engagement through targeted and personalized communication channels.
- Offered enhanced insights into clients, markets, and competition.
- Set up the business intelligence department from scratch.
- Provided analysis, reports, and insights for corporate and retail partners.
- Achieved a 25% reduction in the contact center cost by designing and implementing a self-service interactive voice response (IVR) system for the loyalty program across the MENA region for the complete product portfolio.
- Exceeded targets by beating SLAs and operational KPIs by more than 5% across members' and partners' agreements.
- Negotiated cost reduction through selection, relationship management, and performance management of key business vendors.
Operations Manager
Aimia, Inc.
- Delivered a proprietary loyalty program for HSBC in four countries in less than four weeks; aligned members, participants, suppliers, integration, statementing, and quality control for the regional bank program.
- Started a business process management practice and managed and automated various business process engineering delivering cross-channel earn and redemption fulfillment processes and bringing high efficiency to the business.
- Achieved a 300% increase in traffic by revamping a member website product, Airmilesme.com, in three countries and Myrewardspoints.com in four countries for the HSBC program.
IT Manager
Aimia, Inc.
- Devised and implemented a bespoke CRM product for clients.
- Oversaw the day-to-day IT and operations for the Air Miles loyalty program in the region.
- Transformed the speed and clarity of communications between offices in UAE and Qatar by creating a new platform that connected the two regions.
MIS Manager and ERP (Scala)
Nestlé Waters
- Implemented an ERP system (Scala) across all business functions delivering high efficiency in manufacturing, sales, and procurement processes.
- Managed the IT in-house portfolio of software and hardware.
- Designed and implemented the overall ERP workflow across all divisions.
Management Information System Officer
Atlas Investment Group
- Delivered a portfolio management system product for an internal customer to manage their customer accounts and funds.
- Captured the stock market prices for a period of five years.
- Managed the overall IT infrastructure for the business.
Project History
Online Booking Engine
Increased the number of customers by 40%.
Frame
Saved resource costs of 27% and achieved a 95% on-time reward delivery.
City Points Mobile App
Developed and owned the customer loyalty product for the City Points program.
City Points Website
Developed the full business plan and feasibility study for the product.
Air Miles ME Website
https://www.airmilesme.com/Increased website traffic by 1,000% and increased customer engagement by 35%.
My Rewards Points Website
http://www.myrewardspoints.comProvided an online presence for our client's HSBC Middle East Bank's new program.
Rotana Bookers Website
Provided an online presence for a new program for our client Rotana Hotels.
Redemption Automation
Reduced the processing time down from 3 hours to 2 minutes.
Air Miles 2.0 Website
http://www.airmilesme.comIncreased member website traffic and customer engagement by 250%; also introduced a personalized web experience.
Real-time In-store Redemption
Increased customer spending at our partner merchant by 60% and customer engagement by 40%.
IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
Saved 30% in customer service department costs.
Saudi Holandi Bank Program
Increased the amount of credit card spending and the number of new customers.
CRM Strategy and Implementation (Salesforce)
Made a global alignment of business development efforts and a unified customer value proposition across all teams.
I also led the implementation of Salesforce CRM at an airline organization as well as the partnership strategy for the airlines. This project resulted in aligning the entire lifecycle of global clients across four partially owned airlines, unifying the pricing strategy and value propositions, bringing sales teams, partnership teams, finance, and operations under one umbrella.
The project was extended to include the day-to-day processes of existing clients, so we had all proposals, contracts, transactions, billing, performance, and other related aspects logged and managed on the CRM.
Education
Graduate in Negotiation Skills
Kantar Institute - Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Graduate in Leading High-performing Teams
Kantar Institute - Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Graduate in Strategic Development and Problem Solving
Kantar Institute - Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Graduate in Key Account Management
Kantar Institute - Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Graduate in Enterprise Architecture
Private Institute - Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Yarmouk University - Irbid, Jordan
Certifications
Product Manager Certification™
Product School
Skills
Tools
Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Project, InVision, Slack, Jira, Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Paradigms
User Testing, Testing, Agile Workflow, Kanban, Waterfall Development, Agile Product Management, Agile Project Management, Scrum, Agile, B2C, B2B2C, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C)
Platforms
Windows UI
Industry Expertise
Telecommunications, Banking & Finance
Other
Leadership, Loyalty Management, Product Management, Waterfall Delivery, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Excel, Product Strategy, Loyalty Programs, Detail-oriented, Structure & Organizational Design, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Mobile App Testing, Windows, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Lucidchart, Flowcharts, Process Flows, Business Cases, Business Process Optimization, Business Process Automation, Business Processes, Coalition Loyalty Programs, Microsoft PowerPoint, ROI, IT, Project Management, Web, Business Analysis, Requirements, Product Roadmaps, Go-to-market Plans, User Research, Business Models, Product Design, Product Marketing, Product Frameworks, Innovation, Product Ownership, Product Discovery, Product Delivery, BRD, Software Requirements Specifications (SRS), Business Strategy, Travel Product Manager, Technical Product Management, Waterfall Methodology, Workflow, Roadmaps, Feature Planning, System Integration, Project Timelines, Scope Management, Pitch Decks, Product Conceptualization, Digital Product Management, Digital Product Development, Conceptualization, Ideation, Wireframing, Product Owner, Reporting, User Requirements, Critical Thinking, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Sprint Planning, Tracking, User Journeys, Technical Project Management, Excel 365, Excel Expert, New Product Development, MVP Design, Product Planning, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Project Scoping, Customer Support, Team Leadership, Product Development, Salesforce, Retail & Wholesale, Tourism, Travel, Company Strategy, Frequent Flyer Programs, Business Development, Journey Mapping, Accounting, Financial Modeling, Business Planning, Startups, Startup Consulting, Shell Scripting, Operations Management, Contract Review, Supplier Development, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Feasibility Studies, eCommerce, Mockups, Software as a Service (SaaS), Business to Business (B2B), Web & Mobile Applications, Research, Product Growth, Feature Roadmaps, Accounting Software, Software Development, Operations, Customer Experience, Digital Marketing, Android, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Data Analytics, User Experience (UX), New Business Development, Data Analysis, iOS, APIs, Remote Work, B2B, Business Process Flow Diagrams, Chatbots, API Integration, Vendors & Suppliers, Strategy, Partnerships, Booking Systems, ERP Implementation, App Development, Negotiation, Team Management, Creative Problem Solving, Key Account Management, Enterprise Architecture, Computer Science, Finance, Regulations, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Deployment, User Personas, Feature Prioritization
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring