Product Manager in Midland, TX, United States

Airlines and travel agencies have long struggled with their commercial relationships, specifically the flow of commissions and utilization of discounted rates. Due to the complexity of the contracts, agencies have underutilized commissions and discounted fares as a source of revenue. Airlines have not generated the expected purchase behaviors of travelers as a result.

As the director of product management, I led my team to accomplish the following:
• Identified the problem space and articulated the market problem.
• Designed an innovative solution in conjunction with engineering and architecture.
• Defined a prototype to test the solution with key clients.
• Established an MVP feature set and prioritized backlog.
• Delivered the MVP for beta testing with key clients.
• Managed the release of continued enhancements and backlog items.
• Created a value proposition and market-facing materials.
• Closed deals with 120+ clients over three years.
• Generated $6 million in annually recurring revenue.
• Enhanced the marketability of the broader Sabre platform through differentiation.
• Implemented value-based pricing, a first for Sabre.
• Embedded analytics into the solution for continuous improvement through machine learning.

Airlines had primarily completed the internal ticketing digital transformation. Still, they were struggling to finish the migration of the final 10-15% of tickets represented by interline or multi-airline ticketing, preventing the realization of the benefits of transformation.

My colleagues at Sabre had developed the technology for airlines to exchange, digitally, the data required to enable fully electronic ticketing. The solution suffered through slow market adoption and costly deployments.

After assessing the situation through interviews with current and prospective customers, I learned that the value proposition was not clear, pricing was an adoption detractor, and internal organizations did not see the potential of the technology to address customer needs.

To solve the market communication problem, I rebranded the solution as the Interline Electronic Ticketing Hub. I then revamped the value proposition as a network-enabled tool to complete the digital transformation. I aligned the pricing with a growth and network go-to-market approach, which rewarded key clients that brought scaled adoption to the solution.

The result is a digitally transformed airline ticketing environment and total contract sales of over $25 million.

Travel agencies that are utilizing distributed sales teams struggle to identify and align around marketing, sales, servicing, and operating best practices in an ever-evolving technology landscape. Sabre lacked product utilization insights to drive platform investment decisions that would optimize research and development spend.

As the director of product management over data and analytics products, I initiated a product advisory board with a commission to inform Sabre's product plan and identify best practices in crucial processes involving the Sabre platform.

Following a Lean product framework and the guidance of the voice-of-the-customer data, we—my engineering counterparts and I—accomplished the following:
• Identified the top six problem areas.
• Prioritized the solutions based on technical feasibility and customer need.
• Delivered customer-facing code after each sprint during the sprint review with advisory board participants.
• Implemented the first journey analytics framework on Sabre data.
• Developed a customer-facing prototype that solved for the six critical areas within 12 sprints.
• Signed three customers to a pilot contract before COVID-19 hit the travel marketplace.