Lee is available for hire

Lee Albertyn

Verified Expert in Product Management

Product Manager

Location

Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Toptal Member Since

July 23, 2020

Lee is a seasoned product manager with over 18 years of experience in conceptualizing, creating, and managing products. He has an impressive track record having innovated in excess of 20 products across at least five industry verticals, where Lee's passion for digital and his diverse background and deep understanding of strategy, tech, transformation, and consulting ensures that he stands out. Lee is a strong leader, driven by results and motivated by outcomes that unlock value for his clients.

Product Management Mobile Banking Agile Agile Product Management Project Management Digital Marketing IT Project Management Data Analytics Solution Design Stakeholder Engagement Stakeholder Management Mobile Payments Jira Digital Banking Technology Adoption Product Lifecycle

Project Highlights

Digital Transformation of Alexander Forbes

Led the digital transformation program for Alexander Forbes as part of a $100 million modernization program and defined the strategy and approach to evolve a massively constrained legacy business into a modern, digitally-relevant entity

Website and Forms Redesign and Migration

Fulfilled the role of agile product owner and managed the redesign, development, and migration of the bank's websites and digital forms to a new digital platform.

Apply Online | New Mobile Sales App

Managed the end-to-end design, development, deployment, and operation of a mobile-enabled sales application—growing online sales by 528% and reducing drop-off rates by 65%.

Expertise

Agile Agile Product Management Digital Product Development Digital Strategy Digital Transformation Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)Product Management Strategic Planning & Execution

Work Experience

Solutions Architect — Martech

2020 - PRESENT

Nedbank Group

Worked with senior marketing executives to fully analyze the marketing strategy and marketing objectives using the Lean Canvas process.
Conducted a marketing technology (martech) analysis and assessment and produced a detailed gap analysis to clearly document the existing capability of the martech stack relative to the specified marketing strategic/business objectives.
Developed a target-state marketing technology architecture (martech stack) blueprint that would close all identified gaps and position the bank to achieve its marketing objectives and modernize the martech stack for the future organizational roadmap.
Comprehensively assessed the data architecture, structure, and processes to measure the bank's maturity capability with regards to data availability, access, democratization, analytics, insights, and reporting and recommended a data approach.
Drafted and presented a technology governance framework to support the marketing technology architecture roadmap, solution/application selection, and enterprise architectural approach to martech.
Drafted and presented a data governance framework to support the data democratization and data autonomy required for marketing and in support of the marketing data approach as recommended.
Worked with senior stakeholders and other consultants to re-engineer the marketing target operating model (TOM)—proposed an approach to organizational design, new ways of working (Agile, Scrum), new tech/data enablement, and design and change management.

Director of Digital Product Management

2018 - PRESENT

DigiWhyze

Worked with one of the largest financial services groups in South Africa to manage their design and development program for a new employee benefits management system.
Crafted a digital strategy and architecture blueprint for an insurance group and enabled the definition of a clear execution road-map to support their vision.
Partnered with South Africa's largest locally owned credit bureau to drive the creation of new revenue streams through the development of new, monetized product offerings and services while using their significant datasets as a foundation.
Created a chat-bot strategy and prototype for a financial services call center with the objective of migrating the majority of their call volumes to a self-service channel.
Formulated a captive portal and digital marketing strategy for an airport's guest WiFi offering.

Managing Director of Digital

2018 - 2019

iOCO

Led a digital practice compromised of 110 people including digital strategists, agile practitioners, UX/UI designers, developers, and digital marketers and repositioned the practice behind a new vision, strategy, and operating model.
Deployed three full agile squads to a telecommunications company to coach and inculcate the agile methodology approach and in so doing, developed three new product offerings for marketing, sales, and video-on-demand.
Owned, drove, and won the bid process for a multimillion-dollar proposal to a telecommunications giant for a disruptive digital acceleration platform using agile, human-centered design, DevOps, and an API architecture built using Apigee.
Managed the sourcing and provision of highly skilled ICT resources to a broad client base across financial services, telecoms, retail, entertainment, hospitality, government, and so on—enabling fast-cycle innovation and unlocking value.
Built and supported the web and mobile sites for a cinema company—enabling a full self-service capability including marketing, ticketing, and payments.
Managed the digital marketing and campaigns for a hospitality and casino group that outsourced the full digital agency function including SEO, campaign management, and social media.
Created a new digital brand, built the full digital experience, and omnichannel offering for our own business enabling strong social media presence and generating rich content showcasing our thought-leadership with ongoing engagement tracking.
Served as the sole distributor in South Africa and successfully marketed, sold, and implemented the Hootsuite social media management platform to three new large corporate clients.

Chief Digital Officer

2016 - 2018

Alexander Forbes

Served as a core member of the leadership team that managed the $100 million modernization program and oversaw the digital transformation strategy, technology blueprint, and execution—enabling the vision of becoming a digital-first business.
Unlocked innovation opportunities by increasing development release cycles from 4-to-10 releases per year—enabling new features and performance enhancements while improving system response times by 95% and availability improvements from 83% to 99%.
Realized a 74% improvement in digital marketing ROI by coordinating and driving the consolidation of the group's disparate digital marketing efforts centrally through an orchestrated process resulting in improvements across all metrics.
Formed a new digital division and trained, coached, and mentored the team of 20 skilled subject matter experts to align behind the vision and execute the digital strategy, enabling the several digital objectives defined.
Appointed agile coaches to form an execution capability within the digital division, built around new ways and then championed the organisational adoption of agile and managed the change in the business.
Acquired the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) digital platform; implemented the first (globally) managed service instance of AEM in Azure and migrated the Alexander Forbes sites to AEM utilizing our newly defined customer journeys and user experience.
Built a new mobile app for iOS and Android allowing individual and institutional clients to access information regarding their profile, statements, benefits, policies, and other financial products as well as carry out transactions.
Launched a new mobile app using a pervasive mobile technology USSD (unstructured supplementary services data) enabling clients in areas where data connectivity is poor in order to access crucial policy information and request transactional support.
Managed the day-to-day product management tasks associated with all the digital assets belonging to the group including websites, mobile sites, apps, social media channels, and B2B platforms.

Head of Digital and Mobile Product

2002 - 2016

Nedbank

Served as the head of a product management team accountable for the management of a diverse portfolio of products within the digital banking business including web/mobile banking, mobile payments, virtual wallets, onboarding, digital forms, and more.
Grew the bank's "prepaid" revenue earnings by over 600% in the first year by launching new products allowing customers to purchase prepaid airtime, data, electricity, and lottery tickets using digital banking platforms.
Launched the bank's first mobile account by acquiring a sales channel, allowing customers to register for new bank products using their mobile device contributing to an increased online sales volume in excess of 500%.
Managed the creation of new digital forms capability on Adobe AEM Forms, which rationalized 213 forms into 42 dynamic electronic forms utilizing pre-population and an automated workflow to enable straight-through-processing and digital fulfillment.
Worked with security teams, forensics, and industry players to manage and continually enhance banking security/IAM (identity and access management) features including bio-metrics and second-factor authentication to mitigate fraud and identity theft.
Served as the agile product owner for the bank's first agile implementation requiring the redevelopment of the bank's website on Adobe AEM, adopting a new user experience and fully responsive design and enabling several new differentiating features.

Senior Manager of Mobile Banking

2010 - 2010

ABSA

Led the bank's product management team for mobile banking, ensuring the definition and execution of the product roadmap; was accountable for the growth of adoption, usage, and revenue earned through the channel.
Served as the mobile product manager to incorporate the bank's money transfer feature into the mobile banking channels enabling customers to send money to any recipient and redeem cash at an ATM or selected retail outlets.
Collaborated with the international team to support the rollout of mobile banking solutions into Mozambique and other sub-Saharan territories.

Head of Virtual Channels

2002 - 2010

Nedbank

Led a team of 14 people accountable for the product management of several digital banking products/channels including internet banking, mobile banking, Nedbank secure payments, internet/intranet sites, and online sales.
Managed a groundbreaking (at the time, 2002) virtual banking/lifestyle portal (icanonline), enabling customers to bank, trade stocks, purchase from partner stores, and manage various financial instruments, all online without ever visiting a branch.
Developed, launched, and grew the bank's first personal financial management tool (PMM), enabling customers to aggregate accounts, analyze statements, budget, and track financial behavior—organically growing the user base to 20,000 within a year.
Defined the mobile strategy and then built, launched, and grew two mobile banking channels (WAP and USSD). USSD became the fastest-growing channel for several years and saw a major migration of self-service transactions from the ATM and call center.
Deployed a new state-of-the-art, second-factor authentication method (Approve-IT) for internet banking and assisted in reducing online fraud (e.g., phishing), seeing a significant reduction in fraud losses.
Defined the product roadmap for NetBank Internet Banking and deployed several new features and enhancements to the channel, including a radical new UX and UI and new prepaid airtime purchasing options.

Senior Business Analyst

2000 - 2002

Johannesburg Securities Exchange | JSE

Defined the strategy and business requirements for the exchange's eCommerce program.
Conducted the investigation, analysis, and proposal of new broker dealing accounting (BDA) and corporate action systems.
Served as the business analyst on the financial management reengineering project.
Redesigned the billing systems and accounting packages to align with an entirely new pricing/billing methodology.

Consultant

1997 - 2000

Interim Technology (now Spherion)

Analyzed the Pillsbury Corporation's systems to identify, mitigate, and test any potential Year 2000 (Y2K) date issues that may arise.
Consulted with the Target Corporation and was responsible for the analysis, design, development, and implementation of neural network credit fraud detection and prevention systems.
Served as a consultant to assist the Target Corporation to migrate the group's credit application systems from IMS to DB2.

Project History

Digital Transformation of Alexander Forbes

https://www.itnewsafrica.com/2017/09/alexander-forbes-and-accenture-drive-digital-transformation/

The digital transformation program required a radical review of the business, IT, and processes. The digital strategy and execution plan adopted a holistic approach to assist the business to pivot to a modern, digital-first organization.

Tasks:
• Assessed the legacy IT architecture and defined the blueprint for the future state with a focus on enabling cloud architecture.
• Selected and implemented the best-in-class digital platforms: Adobe AEM and OutSystems.
• Changed from a waterfall project approach to agile and management of the organizational change to entrench, which improved the release cycles from 4 to 10 per year.
• Defined new customer journeys (individuals, members, institutions, brokers), customer experience (CX) and created customer-centric engagements (UX) via updated UI designs.
• Implemented performance enhancements to the online channels which improved response times by 95% and system availability (increasing from 83% to 99%).
• Created new websites and mobile apps (iOS and Android native apps, USSD Mobile) for the 1.3 million customers.
• Coordinated and consolidated digital marketing efforts centrally resulting in improvements across all metrics including a 74% improvement in ROIW.

Telecommunications API Gateway

Negotiated, presented, and won a bid worth $30 million to implement an innovation acceleration program for a telecommunications giant.

In a response to a request for proposals (RFP) from a mobile telecommunications group, I constructed a proposal, presented, and won the bid to implement a capability to enable the business to accelerate innovation, reduce maintenance costs and unlock growth opportunities.

The proposal suggested:
• API micro-services gateway
• Cloud architecture
• Application development factory using agile squads and DevOps capabilities

Website and Forms Redesign and Migration

Fulfilled the role of agile product owner and managed the redesign, development, and migration of the bank's websites and digital forms to a new digital platform.

The bank had acquired the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) platform and initiated an agile approach to migrating its digital assets to the new environment. To adopt this new way of work, the role required the definition of a product vision, the creation of a product backlog and the effective execution of the sprints to achieve the bank's objectives.

We created an entirely new customer experience with a fresh user experience (UX) and user interface (UI). The responsive design of the new websites and mobile sites were iteratively developed and tested with customer focus groups. We also implemented a new digital form capability and resulted in the rationalization of 213 forms into 42 dynamic electronic forms utilizing automated workflow to enable straight-through-processing and digital fulfillment.

The new websites and forms unlocked several new digital features including branch/ATM geo-locators, prepopulated intelligent forms, enhanced SEO, streamlined content creation/publishing, and provided a strong governance framework for managing the bank's digital presence.

Apply Online | New Mobile Sales App

Managed the end-to-end design, development, deployment, and operation of a mobile-enabled sales application—growing online sales by 528% and reducing drop-off rates by 65%.

As the agile product owner and product manager for online/digital sales, I was accountable for the conceptualization of this new channel.

Tasks:
• Developed the app for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone using agile.
• Created and executed the go-to-market plan, including a phased deployment, staff training, marketing plan, and so on.
• Defined the product road-map for enhancements as well as the evolution.
• Grew it from initially one product offering to five banking products.

Prepaid Electricity

https://www.nedbank.co.za/content/dam/nedbank/site-assets/Terms/prepaid-electricity.pdf

Served as the product manager for prepaid services and introduced the ability to banking customers to purchase prepaid electricity online—growing the prepaid revenue stream by 636% in the first year.

As traditional banking revenue (transaction-based fees) faced an increasing threat with margins becoming squeezed, the bank was actively pursuing alternative sources of revenue. I had already enabled prepaid AIRTIME purchases online (in a previous project) and expanded this service to include electricity. The solution required partnering with an aggregator who facilitated the diverse and complex municipal integration requirements and variants.

Prepaid Electricity was made available via online and mobile banking, which grew revenue and attracted new customers to the channel; mobile transactions increased by 18% in the first six months following the introduction of this capability.

Education

1992 - 1996

Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science and Psychology

University of South Africa - Pretoria, South Africa