John Driftmier

A national conference tour came to me with major operational challenges. They were running weekly conferences, each in a new town and venue. The Apple iPad had been on the market for about six months by that time. I created a concept of card-enabled portable self-checkout kiosks to provide information and handle merchandise sales and inventory, even with volunteer cashiers and an ever-changing environment.
After gaining approval, I led a team of hardware and software developers. For conference attendees, we built an information mode for kiosks, which included maps and scheduling information, along with the ability to register for upcoming workshops. For volunteers, the kiosk software also had a self-serve checkout mode for bookstores and merchandise tables. Staff leaders had access to a private back-end dashboard, where they could control and monitor inventory levels, update conference information, and export reports to external systems.
The program was successfully deployed on-time and on-budget. Since launching the kiosks have been deployed at dozens of conferences across the country. Inventory losses have dropped to near-zero, and with the removal of volunteer bottlenecks, merchandise sales increased by 62%.

Black Ball hired me to create a comprehensive reservation system with a focus on increasing vacation package sales. After receiving approval for my design and business plan, I created an entirely new reservation and business analytics system. The front-facing reservation system seamlessly integrated marketing and reservations, including featured packages, business intelligence that suggests additional hotel and attraction options for basic ferry reservations, and an optimized sales process built to increase conversion. The reservation back end is used by virtually all Black Ball employees and combines ferry manifests, accounting, marketing demographics, and more. The complexity of the application is staggering. It was built to accommodate years of intertwining rules and regulations, along with dozens of legacy API systems.
In the year immediately following launch, package bookings increased by 32%, and vehicle reservations increased by 5%. The reservation system continues to increase sales year-over-year.

Our Bridal Fund is an online fundraising app for engaged couples. I was approached by a financial services firm looking to expand its product offering to include a younger audience. I developed the idea and business plan, got funding, and hired and led a team to build the MVP using Ruby on Rails. We delivered the project two months ahead of schedule.
Using the go-to-market strategy I created, we launched with double the expected customers on our first day. I continued to oversee the product through multiple expansions and spin-offs into other products (mortgage down payments, for example). Finally, I assisted the client in successfully selling the product line to another financial services company.