Peter is available for hire
Hire PeterPeter Caron
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Location
Chicago, IL, United States
Toptal Member Since
May 29, 2019
Peter has led innovation that helped to create predictive analytics and sales enablement markets. He specializes in new concepts and reimagining existing products to turn around businesses, create growth, build teams, and develop partners. Peter enjoys working within teams to bring innovative ideas to market.
Project Highlights
AI Product Definition and Roadmap
Helped artificial intelligence (AI) startup to update the roadmap and demonstrate market progress to onboard new customers.
Relaunched a New Platform After Rewriting the Underlying Technology
Successfully relaunched a replacement sales enablement platform, guiding the product through the “version 1.0” days.
Data Science Competitive Strategy Formulation and Execution
Addressed a competitive gap by researching, creating, and implementing a data science strategy.
Expertise
Work Experience
Chief Product Officer (contract)
2019 - PRESENT
UBIX
- Worked at UBIX, a cloud-based, open-source data science platform that helps users of all skill levels develop and deploy big, fast data architecture and data science pipelines.
- Led early-stage data science projects with customers to provide predictive solutions in the pharmaceutical and other industries.
- Specified the roadmap, including the creation of user stories (for the entire UBIX stack)—from managing open-source technologies like Apache Spark and TensorFlow to creating new UIs for different expertise levels.
CMO and VP of Corporate Development
2018 - 2019
CellTrak
- Worked at CellTrak which provides a mobile and SaaS solution that helps home care agencies in the US, Canada, and the UK deliver higher quality care, communicate more effectively, improve compliance, reduce costs, and increase productivity. CellTrak is integrated with over 24 EMR and state and MCO aggregators and supports over one million visits per week.
- Implemented account-based marketing (ABM), replacing a dated and expensive, trade show-led approach. Created executive-level ABM content, generating new pipeline each quarter from under 18% ABM deals to over 56% in less than a year.
- Developed a new VAR partnership and, in four quarters, grew bookings by over 350%. Increased pipeline to over $2 million, which was over 165% of plan and over 9x bookings coverage.
- Managed the marketing, partnering, inside sales, sales engineering, and sales enablement. Worked hands-on concerning all aspects of these functions, from strategy to implementation and management.
- Led a metrics-driven inside sales function that was designed to target ABM accounts.
- Focused sales engineering to address sales cycle blockers with demo paths based on EMR integrations.
CEO
2017 - 2017
Stratus Intelligence
- Worked at Stratus Intelligence which helps high-volume consumer bankruptcy firms grow their legal practices. Stratus’ cloud software, StratusBK, automates the essential tasks in firm management: delivering client service, preparing and filing petitions, tracking cases, and automating tasks.
- Increased the MRR by 28%—a run rate of about $.5 million ARR—by repositioning, creating new pricing, and directly managing sales.
- Cut expenses by 73% to right-size the company for the opportunity.
- Repositioned the company to focus on more lucrative adjacent markets while expanding revenue from the core offering by targeting larger firms.
- Managed all functions, including personally leading sales, marketing, product, DevOps, engineering, and QA.
- Created and executed a new sales process, customer success function; developed new messaging, website (not posted), and implemented Pardot for marketing automation.
- Managed a board that was new to software investing.
- Used Jobs-To-Be-Done Framework to manage innovation.
VP of Product and Solution Strategy | VP of Product Management
2007 - 2016
SAVO
- Worked at SAVO which provides SaaS, in-CRM, and mobile sales enablement solutions to deliver the right materials, information, and subject matter expertise to improve sales productivity.
- Developed a data science/predictive analytics strategy using data assets as differentiation.
- Led the research, proof-of-concept, customer and market testing.
- Managed excellent relationships with new analysts at Forrester, SiriusDecisions, and 451 Group—leading to high scores in critical comparative pieces, like SiriusDecisions' SiriusView.
- Saved at-risk MRR by developing new analytics services offering to fill a competitive gap and address customer satisfaction.
- Used “Lean Startup” approach to create a product and solution strategic planning process.
- Worked with engineering to support the Agile transformation.
- Partnered with customers to drive innovation, leading to a more market-driven roadmap for mobile (iOS and Android smartphones and tablets), prospect engagement, and channel enablement offerings.
- Helped manage partnerships with SAP, Salesforce, and others.
- Built functions—product marketing, product management, competitive intelligence, analyst relations—while developing the product vision.
- Hired and developed a team of 12 product managers, UX designers, and tech writers.
- Partnered with sales and customer success teams to support sales cycles and revitalize existing accounts to ensure retention.
- Spoke at customer conferences held throughout the country.
- Relaunched a new SAVO platform and guided the product through the “version 1.0” days, which require making quick decisions about enhancing stability versus investing in innovation.
VP of Global Marketing
2006 - 2007
Arcplan
- Worked at Arcplan, Inc. (now called Longview Solutions), a worldwide analytics provider of financial and operational performance management software that accesses and analyzes data from SAP, Hyperion, Oracle, Microsoft, and other systems concurrently.
- Rebuilt Arcplan’s marketing strategy, emphasizing its differentiation and setting the stage for stabilization and growth in a competitive market.
- Changed the positioning to compete in the performance management market rather than continuing to compete in the much larger and well-funded traditional Business Intelligence (BI) market.
- Helped create partnerships with BI vendors that used to be Arcplan competitors.
- Partnered with sales to develop messaging for finance instead of IT, created sales enablement and communications materials, and launched a new web site.
- Managed a metrics-based lead-generation budget of over $1.5 million.
- Balanced the marketing investment: SEM/SEO, SDRs, customer events, and more.
- Aligned activities based on sales metrics like revenue, pipeline, and qualified leads.
Director of Product Management | Director of Global Alliances
1997 - 2006
SPSS
- Worked for SPSS, Inc. (now part of IBM), a leading worldwide provider of predictive analytics software and solutions. Founded in 1968, SPSS at the time of its acquisition by IBM, had over 250,000 customers worldwide and 1,200 employees in 60 countries. FY 2006 revenues were $261.5 million.
- Planned and executed a database partner strategy to turn potential competition into partners. The strategy used a feature, in-database mining, to use competitive database add-ons as a platform, providing an incentive for database vendors to work more closely with SPSS.
- Managed a team of product managers in charge of SPSS’ predictive analytics offerings: data mining, text mining, web mining, and enterprise model management, which comprised the backbone of SPSS growth strategy.
- Managed SPSS’ flagship data mining product, Clementine (now IBM SPSS Modeler), to achieve growth targets, including 63% for SPSS data mining tools in Q1 2003, double-digit growth for at least five consecutive quarters through Q4 2004, and 100% growth in 1999 and 2000.
- Developed and promoted vertical go-to-market offerings to expand global adoption of SPSS solutions.
- Launched a new enterprise model management platform to move from a legacy desktop business into an enterprise applications business.
- Integrated technology from a text mining acquisition leading to growth that as a "genuine bright spot" (SPSS’ SEC filing) and a first-to-market position in using unstructured and structured data for predictive analytics/data science.
Lead Paralegal
1993 - 1997
Antitrust Division, US Department of Justice
- Performed litigation support, eventually leading a team of up to 20, for major antitrust cases in the technology, healthcare and agricultural processing industries.
- Set up the workflow for eDiscovery systems, including the use of databases and imaging systems.
Project History
AI Product Definition and Roadmap
http://www.ubixlabs.comHelped artificial intelligence (AI) startup to update the roadmap and demonstrate market progress to onboard new customers.
UBIX (Ubix.ai) is a cloud-based, open-source data science platform that helps users of all skill levels develop and deploy big, fast data architecture and data science pipelines.
Project Specifics:
• Defined the roadmap for a startup by assessing the initial vision and prioritizing development of a highly technical roadmap.
• Updated the roadmap presentation for existing and potential investors,
• Created user stories for user interfaces, BI integrations, and machine learning model management.
• Spearheaded implementations in the pharmaceutical and other industries to ensure successful, on-time implementations, and develop a better understanding of roadmap needs.
Project Specifics:
• Defined the roadmap for a startup by assessing the initial vision and prioritizing development of a highly technical roadmap.
• Updated the roadmap presentation for existing and potential investors,
• Created user stories for user interfaces, BI integrations, and machine learning model management.
• Spearheaded implementations in the pharmaceutical and other industries to ensure successful, on-time implementations, and develop a better understanding of roadmap needs.
Relaunched a New Platform After Rewriting the Underlying Technology
Successfully relaunched a replacement sales enablement platform, guiding the product through the “version 1.0” days.
On this project, I relaunched a replacement sales enablement platform, guiding the product through the “version 1.0” days, which required making quick decisions about enhancing stability versus investing in innovation.
Project Specifics:
• Worked directly with customers and early adopters to assess needs.
• Intervened to reprioritize development work when customers' priorities did not align with the existing plan.
• Identified unappreciated but critical capabilities, created user stories, and worked with UX, development, QA, and DevOps teams to deploy these enhancements.
• Tracked metrics to show the traction of existing account migrations and net new pipeline and adoption.
Project Specifics:
• Worked directly with customers and early adopters to assess needs.
• Intervened to reprioritize development work when customers' priorities did not align with the existing plan.
• Identified unappreciated but critical capabilities, created user stories, and worked with UX, development, QA, and DevOps teams to deploy these enhancements.
• Tracked metrics to show the traction of existing account migrations and net new pipeline and adoption.
Data Science Competitive Strategy Formulation and Execution
Addressed a competitive gap by researching, creating, and implementing a data science strategy.
SAVO, a sales enablement pioneer, was about to lose its competitive edge when other offerings started using data science to create differentiation. This competitive move into data science was not obvious; I identified the need and worked with the CEO to spin up the project, which was later credited as a critical move for closing the gap in the market.
Project Specifics:
• Developed a data science/predictive analytics strategy using data assets as differentiation.
• Led the research, proof-of-concept, customer and market testing.
• Performed real-world, in-person data science market research to assess possibilities and the state of the market.
• Researched customer needs, and guided the newly formed data science team in creating data science features.
• Worked directly with customers to save accounts at risk of leaving, saving MRR.
Project Specifics:
• Developed a data science/predictive analytics strategy using data assets as differentiation.
• Led the research, proof-of-concept, customer and market testing.
• Performed real-world, in-person data science market research to assess possibilities and the state of the market.
• Researched customer needs, and guided the newly formed data science team in creating data science features.
• Worked directly with customers to save accounts at risk of leaving, saving MRR.
Education
1990 - 1992
Bachelor's Degree in Government
Georgetown University - Washington, DC, USA
Certifications
SEPTEMBER 2010 - PRESENT
Agile Scrum — Better User Stories
Mountain Goat Software
SEPTEMBER 2005 - PRESENT
Requirements That Work
Pragmatic Marketing
Collaboration That Works
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