Howard Eskins
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Brentwood, CA, United States
Toptal member since August 19, 2021
Howard's mission is to provide organizations with product, program, and customer experience services for their digital transformation journeys. His product management coverage includes hardware, software, services, and SaaS offerings. He has designed and implemented product lifecycle and support services processes, workflows, and accompanying management functions. Howard is well-versed in large-scale program initiatives such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Customer Experience Management
- New Products & Services
- Product Management
- Program Management
- Project Management
- Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
- Technical Support
Work Experience
Product Manager/Business Analyst
Adobe
- Led the migration of recurring revenue services data from Salesforce to Microsoft Dynamics.
- Automated lead and opportunity management processes and integrated product and financial data linking with historical lineage.
- Developed and implemented GUI-driven subscription lifecycle management services.
Product Development Manager
Verizon
- Led the enterprise messaging product roadmap, achieving key YOY metrics improvements in volume (44%), revenue (19%), and customers (18%).
- Implemented Agile Scrum development methodology. Successfully launched 13 product releases per schedule. Maintained Confluence and Jira documents.
- Created, prioritized, and maintained product requirements backlog and product roadmap fulfilling product owner role.
- Led the program management of product security compliance and customer security evaluations.
- Identified product support deficiencies implemented a Jira integrated escalation process resulting in customer experience improvements.
- Performed financial analysis, built forecast model, and provided revenue growth recommendations.
- Developed long-term business messaging vision within a communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) strategy, including a three-year roadmap.
Portfolio Product Managemer (Wireless)
Cisco
- Owned Cisco's wireless services (support, professional, and advanced) portfolio for controllers, access points, software, and associated services. Used traditional attach and subscription revenue models.
- Established and met or exceeded wireless services booking targets and margin.
- Aligned wireless service offers to product capabilities roadmap.
- Drove strategic input into new product portfolio transition efforts.
- Performed competitive analysis on competitor capabilities and gaps in coverage.
- Defined and incorporated embedded support features to be included within the new portfolio.
- Identified and implemented support price increases for key products resulting in millions of dollars of additional bookings growth.
- Developed and implemented a go-forward strategy to integrate a legacy advanced services analytics tool into the Cisco DNA product suite.
SaaS Product Manager (Network Optimization Services)
Broadcom
- Owned Brocade's proactive support automation strategy and monitoring service portfolio.
- Led a cross-functional team to develop, implement, and manage the worldwide proactive support automation and monitoring services portfolio.
- Analyzed market trends, customer segments, competitive landscape and engaged with customers to gather product requirements.
- Created and delivered business plan, MRD, PRD, and product roadmap. Evangelized and led market development with sales and partners.
- Drove solution development using Agile Scrum methodologies in conjunction with standard waterfall product development.
- Established pricing, revenue, and a go-to-market (GTM) plan and achieved 20% product revenue growth through solution enhancements and GTM activities.
- Tripled the number of connected customers over a three-year period with continuing growth in the pipeline.
- Automated and eliminated Level 1 third-party support services resulting in multi-million dollar savings within a three-year ROI.
- Integrated a proactive support automation solution with disparate case management, defect tracking, and OEM entitlement systems along with a customer portal for near real-time visibility.
- Launched eight releases per schedule year using Agile Scrum methodology.
Services Product Manager (Support Automation)
Oracle
- Led the aggressive development and adoption of Sun's Auto Service Request service. Achieved cost savings, increased revenue, and improved customer satisfaction by automating customer service request creation on product failures.
- Increased customer adoption by 90% and 600+% adoption increase from 2007 target and achieved an additional $2,000,000 in operational cost savings.
- Defined and deployed the overall adoption strategy and awareness campaign.
- Developed and delivered the strategic product development roadmap.
- Delivered nine consecutive on-time releases since the general availability announcement.
- Integrated the product offering into sales channels such as direct, partner, and telechannels.
Technical Operations Manager
Oracle
- Appointed to drive strategic business initiatives for GCS APAC with a primary focus on technical operations. Set the direction, priorities, and goals for APAC technical operations and led staff in the execution of duties and goal attainment.
- Led the successful migration of APAC GCS to Oracle 11i ERP.
- Created, developed, and achieved global adoption for the first services avian flu business continuity strategy in company history.
- Co-led the creation, development, and deployment of Sun’s global Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) program.
- Led the Sun Connected Services initiative for APAC, expecting to achieve $3,000,000 in annual cost savings and generated $100,000,000 additional annual revenue globally.
NPI and Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) Manager
Oracle
- Led a global team to execute product release activities vital to Sun’s success in positioning, selling, and supporting an $11+ billion portfolio of offerings throughout 15 geographically established markets.
- Served as the primary point of contact for internal stakeholders and voice of the customer input as well as escalation management of local business issues.
- Managed 14 direct reports plus a virtual team of more than 55 members and a multimillion-dollar annual budget.
- Partnered with senior executives to drive acceptance and implementation of Sun’s unified service delivery strategy on time and within budget by revamping and consolidating regional and corporate delivery readiness field operations.
- Overcame controversy and objections to consolidation by creating alignment vision and leading staff through team formation stages, seven stages of change, and consolidation training.
- Achieved 42% efficiency gain and $1,000,000 in annual labor savings by identifying redundancies and streamlining processes.
Strategic Services Account Manager
Oracle
- Served as primary service delivery interface for two of Sun’s top accounts (Microsoft, Oracle) in Strategic Account Services (SAS) West. Managed up to 18 direct reports and a multimillion-dollar annual budget.
- Turned around antagonistic relationships with key accounts through strong relationship development and consistent demonstration of Sun’s commitment to the account.
- Played an instrumental role in the successful renewal of several million dollars in annual service contracts by effectively managing customer relationships and service delivery.
- Positioned Sun as a compelling customer choice of products and services by leading staff, processes, and technology to support Sun’s most strategic corporate accounts.
Project History
Salesforce to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Migration
Successfully transitioned two acquired businesses from legacy Salesforce instances onto Microsoft Dynamics 365. Streamlined and automated sales processes while improving data lineage.
Led a multi-year project to migrate all Salesforce instances to Microsoft Dynamics 365, streamlining and enhancing business processes, optimizing customer and sales journeys, preserving financial and product data lineages, and establishing the groundwork for predictive analytics.
Network Optimization Services
Owned the portfolio, including development, pricing, and GTM. Developed the roadmap and awareness and adoption campaigns incrementing YOY revenue growth by 20%.
As a portfolio owner, I also improved margin by 50% by fully automating Level 1 technical support and integrating the solution with Salesforce CRM.
NMS is a monitoring, data analysis, and reporting service for end-to-end networking infrastructures, providing visibility across applications, networks, and devices. Leveraging a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, NMS helps organizations maximize network and application availability, optimize resource efficiency, and make better, faster, and more informed decisions.
The service automatically collects, detects, analyzes, and responds with corrective action and support engagement.
Subscription Model Transition
Owned Cisco's wireless services portfolio. I was in charge of transitioning contract-based offers to a revenue subscription model to drive recurring revenue. Defined warranty, determined uplift increases, and met revenue and growth targets.
Cisco provides around-the-clock, award-winning technical support services online and over the phone to all customers, partners, resellers, and distributors who hold valid Cisco service contracts.
Solution support is provided from centralized support from a primary point of contact with expertise across 30+ Cisco solutions, 250+ Cisco products, and 100+ Solution Support Alliance partners.
Business Messaging
Owned the development roadmap, significantly increasing our YOY revenue, customers, and volume. Performed financial analysis and delivered a business messaging roadmap within an overall communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) strategy.
Verizon Business & Enterprise Messaging is a cloud-based, application-to-person messaging gateway that can be easily accessed and integrated with existing applications and workflow processes. With it, your mobile workforce will be able to reliably send and receive secure messaging because a connected team is a productive team.
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
Saint Marys College of California - Moraga, CA
Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Technology
San Jose State University - San Jose, CA
Certifications
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
PRINCE2 Practitioner Certification
PRINCE2 UK
ITIL V3
axelos
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Slack, Zoom, VPN
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Agile, Scrum, Change Management
Other
Product Management, Product Development Manager, Project Management, Program Management, Customer Experience, Technical Support, Product Marketing, Market Research & Analysis, Customer Experience Management, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), New Products & Services, Account Management, Strategy, Roadmaps, SaaS Product Management, SaaS, Business Processes, Business Analysis, Software as a Service (SaaS), Product Owner, Scrum Product Owner, Product Strategy, Project Management & Work Tracking Tools, SOP Development, Marketing, Industrial Design, International Projects, Analytics, Automation, Global Operations, People Management, Client Services, Field Service, IT Service Management (ITSM), Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Growth, Market Research, Cloud, Business Strategy, Product Positioning, Growth Strategy, Infrastructure, Scrum Master, Product Vision, Business Design, Business Process Flow (BPF), Standard Operating Procedures Development, Work Process Design, Business Process Management (BPM), Accounting, Finance, Statistics, BlueJeans, Webex, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Sales Support, Smartsheet, Price Analysis, Business Development, Networking, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Contract, Security, Servers, Storage, Tech Sales, Financial Modeling, B2C Marketing, Autonomous Navigation, Location-aware Technology, Monitoring, Enterprise SaaS, Wireless, Product Support, Managed Services, SMS, Omnichannel Marketing, Cellular, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence Product Manager, Microsoft 365, SAP
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