Roman A. Abashin, Product Manager in Vienna, Austria
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Roman A. Abashin

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Bio

Roman is your bridge between tech, business strategy, and data. Whether you need to execute a project in data analytics, drive product innovation, or improve your web application's performance and conversion, Roman is a battle-tested technical product lead who gets things done even in the most complex environments.

Project Highlights

Business Analytics Dashboard for Sales Teams (B2B SaaS)
Rolled out a cutting-edge business analytics dashboard to a fast-growing German B2B SaaS company.
CRM Implementation for a B2B Sales Team
Analyzed sales teams processes and requirements and implemented a leading CRM solution at an edtech company.
Improving Usability in a Multi-Tenant Salesforce CRM Installation
Vastly improved usability and data quality in a complex and historically grown Salesforce environment.

Expertise

  • Agile
  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
  • Design Sprints
  • Digital Strategy
  • Digital Transformation
  • Google Tag Manager
  • R
  • SaaS

Work Experience

Freelance Senior Product Manager

2019 - PRESENT
Toptal Clients
  • Increased monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and the number of active users of edtech company seven times in year-over-year (YOY).
  • Transformed B2B service provider from a cost-based to a value-based revenue model.
  • Led distributed scrum team and improved processes.

Founder

2019 - PRESENT
Nougat.ai
  • Analyzed the risk of flooding in the Ugandan road network in a spatio-temporal research project.
  • Revealed betweenness of critical nodes in spatio-temporal analysis of Middle Eastern mobile cell receiver data.
  • Determined location scores for French mortuary services based on both publicly available and mined data.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

2022 - 2023
BrainLuxury
  • Built and executed the product roadmap involving the senior executive team.
  • Reduced the IT and product department spend by 80% while increasing product quality.
  • Improved the Google PageSpeed mobile score by 40+ percentage points.
  • Set up a Git-based continuous delivery pipeline with both internal and external teams on Shopify Plus.
  • Built a 360° analytics dashboard on Looker, which allowed transparency and LTV impact projection for every dollar spent on performance marketing.
  • Created a custom R-based analytics pipeline to model Shopify data into LTV projections, broken down by cohorts and customer purchase categories.

Manager of Business Analytics

2019 - 2020
Prescreen.io (acquired by XING)
  • Created Salesforce and R/Shiny sales and reporting dashboards for all departments.
  • Restructured the sales pipeline and reporting from lead to after-sales.
  • Improved the processes and workflows to increase MRR and drive down churn across all stages of the customer lifecycle.
  • Took charge of overseeing a team of two junior employees.

Product Manager

2018 - 2019
Prescreen.io (acquired by XING)
  • Shipped a new capstone SaaS feature for tens of thousands of HR professionals across Europe.
  • Facilitated discovery workshops with team and clients.
  • Helped to improve the Scrum/Agile development process.
  • Coached junior employees across several departments.

IT Consultant

2016 - 2018
adesso SE
  • Fulfilled the role of project lead and was responsible for the deliverables of teams of up to five people.
  • Facilitated workshops with C-suite and departments.
  • Supported clients' product managers with workshops, product management methodology, user stories, UX concepts, and UI mockups.
  • Assisted clients' engineering teams with requirements engineering, implementation recommendations, and acceptance criteria.
  • Supported clients' leadership with project management and planning, success metrics, and status reporting.

Project Manager

2015 - 2016
ibis acam
  • Shipped an innovative product in the edtech/public space from idea to market in nine months.
  • Facilitated product workshops with the C-suite and departments.
  • Created personas, user stories, and user flows involving specialists and the senior executive team.
  • Established the Agile development methodology in the product department.
  • Implemented a human resources tool (HR tech) to improve recruitment.

Business Analytics Dashboard for Sales Teams (B2B SaaS)

Rolled out a cutting-edge business analytics dashboard to a fast-growing German B2B SaaS company.

I designed, planned, and rolled out a highly successful internal KPI dashboard for the fastest-growing recruitment software company in the DACH region, part of a corporation with over 1,500 employees.

WORK DONE
• Analyzing B2B sales processes at different phases in the customer lifecycle.
• Understanding the business, technology, and operations/administration perspectives of the sales process.
• Breaking down complex accounting-based figures into simple KPIs and metrics like MRR and monthly churn rate.
• Setting up a clean, reproducible data pipeline from Salesforce and the production database (MariaDB/MySQL) to the dashboard via R Server.
• Rolling out the dashboard to the company's pre-sales, sales, customer success, and customer support teams.

DELIVERABLES
• KPI dashboard for B2B SaaS sales teams

Technical Growth Lead for the Netflix of Coaching

Decreased bounce rates by almost 50%, increased conversion, implemented GTM, and enhanced the eCommerce.

The client was the most successful coaching platform in the German-speaking market—think Netflix/Coursera for self-improvement—was looking to improve their customer lifecycle.

Customer Lifecycle Improvement Goals:
• Effectiveness of organic, referral, and paid traffic
• Conversion rates and website performance
• Engagement and upsell rates among existing customers

(The engagement is still ongoing.)

Tools:
• Google Marketing Platform (Analytics, Tag Manager, Optimize)

Product Management for Business Intelligence

Shipped cutting-edge business analytics to over 40,000 business users.

I contributed to the design, plan, and shipment of business analytics to over 40,000 HR professionals.

We worked closely with customers, designed mock-ups, facilitated workshops, and delivered the product on budget and ahead of schedule. Furthermore, I played an active part in the scrum development process as a product owner.

DELIVERABLES
• Shipped the product in record time.

Requirements Engineering for an Edtech Platform

Led the requirements project for the first digital educational marketplace in Austria—from concept to product in nine months.

The client was the largest Austrian privately-held educational provider with 20,000+ yearly clients and 600+ employees in 50+ locations.

I led the requirements project that delivered the specifications for a new platform that was to become Aspidoo.com, the first digital educational marketplace in Austria.

DELIVERABLES
• Provided the user requirements, user stories, UX, mockups, and success metrics.
• Facilitated workshops with C-level, middle management, and operations.

Conversion Optimization for a Chinese-European Web Shop

Led a team that set up an online shop with Google PageSpeed ratings of over 90/100 and conversion rates of up to 15%.

The client was a Europe-based online shop that was looking to quickly sell a large number of products in a hot, highly competitive market.

I assembled and led the team (tech, operations, and sales) that set up an online shop, automated fulfillment, and optimized all elements along the lead-to-sales process. Furthermore, we penetrated deeply into adjacent regions via highly targeted long-tail advertising.

Deliverables:
• Achieved a Google PageSpeed Rating of 90+/100 (mobile and desktop)
• Built a fully automated, mobile-friendly webshop based on WordPress/Woocommerce
• Improved Google Ad conversion rates by up to 15%

Product Requirements for a Self-service Web Configurator

Designed, in eight weeks, a product for the leading regional utility company that caters to over 1.5 million people.

The client, the number-one utility company in the region, was looking to enable potential photovoltaic (PV) clients to configure their products via a mobile-friendly web application. It should be accessible from tablets and easy-to-use even for elderly customers.

We facilitated workshops with the client, wrote Agile-friendly user requirements, and designed user workflows as well as mock-ups.

Deliverables:
• Crafted personas, UX, mock-ups, and user stories

Geospatial Location Scoring Tool

Developed a visual dashboard to find hidden, profitable building sites in untapped areas.

The client was an enterprise specialized in the delivery of funeral services across France. They were looking for untapped, niche markets where service density was low, but the demand was high.

I combined geospatial and demographic data, developed a scoring formula to assess market attractiveness, and visualized the data in an accessible way for easy access by business users.

Deliverables:
• Built a visual dashboard with locations across all of France

Digital Transformation in the Public Sector

Led a team in the implementation of an engineering project with complex requirements for a large public organization.

The client was a large organization in the public sector that was looking for a new document management system (DMS) that would support their core business.

I led the project team that was hired to analyze and document all processes, create requirements and user stories, and help to the shape the look and feel of the new DMS product.

Deliverables:
• Created user stories, acceptance criteria, and UI mockups

Lead for Geospatial Data Analysis

Developed methods to map large amounts of data to geospatial and temporal features.

The client was an international project (based in the UK) which was researching the effects of different weather patterns on the economy in a Central African country.

I developed innovative ways to map large amounts of remote sensing data to economic and geographic features as well as development indices of various regions. Furthermore, there was a need to create geodesic calculation methods in R that are more efficient than those currently publicly available.

Deliverables:
• Mapped the weather data to various natural and calculated geospatial and temporal features
• Extracted, cleaned, structured, and combined all the data from different sources
• Created scripts and functions that are usable for reproducible research

Data Product for B2B Clients

Led and shipped a client-facing visualization dashboard for an innovative startup.

The client was a startup that has developed new methods to passively measure footfall (foot traffic) in areas that are interesting for retail companies.

Deliverables:
• Created a geospatial heatmap dashboard
• Extracted, cleaned raw GPS data
• Set up a data pipeline with R and SQL
• Supported the CEO with sales slide decks

Flagship Artificial Intelligence (AI) for a Central Bank

Helped team set up an artificial intelligence project, taking a credit risk model from 65% to 90% weighted accuracy.

The client was a large European central bank that asked for consulting support in setting up their first AI project.

I reviewed the initiative and helped the project team ensure complete success. We set up a hypothesis-driven project workflow, defined success metrics, and reported to the C-suite with success metrics.

Deliverables:
• Consulted for the project team
• Composed a project review document for the C-suite

Product Innovation in a Metal Foundry

Delivered more than ten actionable product ideas to the C-suite.

The client was a publicly-held Central European metal foundry. They were looking for new ideas on how to stay attractive in a changing market environment and become more appealing to a younger target audience.

I analyzed the processes and current products and created personas with the project team, applied business model innovation patterns, and extracted concrete business ideas that fall in line with the capabilities of the client but targeted an untapped market.

Deliverables:
• Produced personas, product ideas, UX concepts, and UI mockups

Product Leadership for Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing

Led the product team that delivered a tool which was over 10x faster and 3x more accurate than the best human operator.

The client was a large Chinese solar manufacturer looking to improve the QA processes for three factories with a combined output of over 200,000 photovoltaic panels per day.

I led the product side of the team that delivered a visual panel testing tool which was over 10x faster and 3x more accurate than the best human operator in the factory.

Deliverables:
• Provided the user requirements, user stories, UX, mock-ups, and success metrics

Product Requirements for Sales and Project Management

Led a 12-month requirement project for the largest regional utility company, catering to 1.5+ million people.

The client, the number-one utility company in the region, was looking to analyze, overhaul, and integrate their sales and project management systems.

We facilitated workshops with the client, wrote Agile-friendly user requirements, and designed user workflows as well as mock-ups.

Deliverables:
• Produced personas, UX, mock-ups, user stories, and API documentation

CRM Implementation for a B2B Sales Team

Analyzed sales teams processes and requirements and implemented a leading CRM solution at an edtech company.

I was responsible for the analysis, planning, and roll-out of a CRM solution an innovative edtech company in Austria.

This project included:
• Analyzing B2B sales processes at different phases in the customer lifecycle
• Understanding the business, technology, and operations/administration perspectives of the sales process
• Match various market-leading solutions against requirements, keeping projected costs under budget
• Roll-out of the winning system (Pipedrive)

Improving Usability in a Multi-Tenant Salesforce CRM Installation

Vastly improved usability and data quality in a complex and historically grown Salesforce environment.

I was responsible for the analysis and improvement of sales processes along the full customer lifecycle of a recruitment software company in the DACH region with 300,000+ daily users.

This project included:
• Analyzing B2B sales processes at different phases in the customer lifecycle
• Communicating and coordinating all teams with a customer focus: marketing, product, pre-sales, sales, customers success, and customer support
• Structuring and cleaning messy data from the CRM
• Identifying churn predictors
• Identifying low- and high-performing sales teams
• Implementing a sales prediction system based on behavioral variables
• Enabling Salesforce to handle multi-touchpoint, multi-campaign leads for better marketing attribution
• Being the go-to-guy for any data and process questions for marketing, product, pre-sales, sales, customer success, and customer support teams throughout the company

Deliverables:
• Improved workflows along the sales funnel
• Self-service KPIs for sales teams
• One source of truth for sales data

Growth Hacker | Product Lead for the Netflix for Coaching

Spearheaded the following 12-months achievements: monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from €50,000 to €275,000, six times more subscribed users, Black Friday sales of €875,000, €3 million additional revenue in one-off order entries.

A B2C SaaS in the education space (ongoing project via Toptal).
Started as a dedicated growth hacker/data specialist, I now lead product management and marketing. I am m deeply involved with the client and act as a trusted advisor for all kinds of strategic product questions.

Improving ROAS—Clothing Manufacturer/Retail

Led a project to identify gaps and improve return on ad spend (ROAS) for a B2C brand.

The client is an avant-garde high-end clothing brand from Vienna, Austria, and was looking to improve ROAS through various measures.

Functional improvements:
• Matching campaigns and budget to available marketing signals.
• AI-assisted selection of marketing audiences.
• Various measures to improve user experience (UX) and conversion rates.

Technical improvements:
• Implemented measures to cluster users.
• Implemented tracking of product views for usage in dynamic remarketing campaigns.
• Implemented remarketing for users with abandoned carts.
• Various measures to improve website performance using Google PageSpeed score.
• Custom JavaScript coding to improve tracking of customer identifiers and bridge gaps related to cross-site issues.

Tools:
Google Marketing Platform including Analytics, Tag Manager, Adwords, and Dynamic Remarketing, and Shopify,

Conversion Tracking for Performance Marketing | US Platform for Brain/Mind Sound Technology

Implemented effective conversion tracking on a complex web platform for a global B2C brand.

The client is the leading global sound-based brain/mind technology provider and was looking to scale their business through performance marketing.

Deliverables:
• Implemented tracking measures to send signals to all relevant platforms such as Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Facebook Pixel.
• Set up events to cluster users by specific actions like showing interest in a specific product type.
• Fixed various issues arising from the legacy sales platform.

Tools:
Google Marketing Platform including Analytics, Tag Manager, Adwords, and Dynamic Remarketing, and FastSpring

Black Friday Campaign | German B2C SaaS

Successfully implemented a Black Friday campaign for a B2C SaaS platform, resulting in €800,000 revenue over five days.

Deliverables:
• Defined product and sales strategy.
• Helped creating marketing assets such as visuals and copy.
• Set up high-converting landing pages for different stages of the campaign.
• Tracked and improved UX and conversion through A/B testing.

Tools:
Google Marketing Platform including Analytics, Tag Manager, Adwords, and Dynamic Remarketing, and Facebook Pixel.

Performance Marketing Lead for an International D2C Brand

https://brainluxury.com

Oversaw a $100,000 monthly performance marketing budget in the nutritional supplement space. Radically cleansed the account from low-performing ad concepts. Helped improve CAC by 40%.

BrainLuxury helps improve sleep quality, not time in bed. It's a radically different approach to great mornings and high-performance days. BrainLuxury has a small but growing fan base in the USA and Europe, spanning business leaders, sports stars, and nutrition hackers.

SAP ERP Requirements Engineering

Led the ERP requirements elicitation, documentation, and stakeholder communication process for a utilities company with 7,000+ employees and €2+ billion in revenue.

During the 2-year project, I was in charge of the following:

• Requirement elicitation workshops
• Resolution of requirement conflicts between stakeholders
• Final product requirements documentation (including mockups, maps, and sketches)

Product Requirements for a New ERP

Led the early Oracle ERP requirements elicitation for a government agency.

An Austrian government agency wanted to improve the usability and efficiency of their ERP implementation and foster better collaboration between departments using seamless integration of different types of media, documents, and information. I led the project team supporting that government agency. We were responsible for the organization and execution of requirements elicitation workshops, the product requirements documentation (including functional and non-functional requirements), and communicating the results to stakeholders. The project encompassed both user feedback and deep analysis and simplification of a complex matrix of SQL queries. As this was a government agency, keeping the output of all scripts and queries stable while improving the systems integration was paramount.
2019 - 2019

Bachelor of Science Degree in International Business | Management Information Systems

Vienna University of Economics and Business - Vienna, Austria

APRIL 2019 - PRESENT

How Google Does Machine Learning

Google

NOVEMBER 2018 - PRESENT

Top 5% in R

Stack Overflow (Stackoverflow.com)

AUGUST 2018 - PRESENT

Google Digital Garage (Online Marketing)

Google

DECEMBER 2016 - PRESENT

Certified Professional for Usability and User Experience (CPUX)

UXQB

JULY 2016 - PRESENT

Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering (CPRE)

IREB

JULY 2015 - PRESENT

Computer Science 101

Stanford Online

MAY 2015 - PRESENT

Innovation Warp Boost Camp

42Angelitos

OCTOBER 2007 - OCTOBER 2009

International English Language Testing System (IELTS)

British Council

Tools

R, Jira, Balsamiq Mockups, Tableau, Confluence, GitHub, Adobe InDesign, Balsamiq, InVision, Sketch, Draw.io, Slack, Google Workspace, Git, GitLab, Adobe Illustrator, Skype for Business, UX Tools, Looker, Google Analytics, MySQL Performance Tuning, Google Data Studio, PageSpeed, Shopify Plus, Oracle ERP

Paradigms

Scrum, Kanban, Agile, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Agile Product Management, Agile Workflow, Agile Project Management, Requirements Analysis, Marketplace Platforms, Agile UX, Gamification, Key Performance Metrics, B2B2C, Rapid Prototyping, Rapid Interactive Prototyping, Digital Marketing Best Practices, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C), HIPAA Compliance

Platforms

Shopify, Blockchain, Blockchain Platforms, Google Ads, FastSpring, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Industry Expertise

Banking & Finance, Sales & Marketing, Education Technology (Edtech), Digital Agencies, Cryptoeconomics, Aviation, Nonprofits

Other

Google Tag Manager, Human Resources (HR), HR Analytics, Sprint Planning, Design Sprints, Agile Sprints, IT Project Management, IT Projects, Product Ownership, Product-market Fit, Product Marketing, Product Launch, Windows, iOS, Mobile, Mobile Web, Mobile UX, Mobile Design, Digital, Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation, Innovation, User Conversion, Online Marketing, Funnel Optimization, Conversion, Website Conversion, Product Management, Technical Product Management, Digital Product Management, Digital Marketing, Remote Work, Google SEO, Stakeholder Engagement, Data Strategy, Business, Business Cases, Small Business, Business Strategy, Business Solutions, Small Business Management, Business Analysis, Business Administration, IT Business Analysis, Business Processes, Process Design, Process Ownership, UX Process, Business Process Analysis, Business Process Automation, Business Process Optimization, Business Process Flow Diagrams, Business Process Re-engineering, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), SaaS, Requirements, Product Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Go-to-market Plans, User Research, Business Models, Product Design, Product Frameworks, Product Discovery, Product Delivery, Product Owner, UX Design, Product Development, Product Growth, Growth, Data Analytics, Data Analysis, Software as a Service (SaaS), Virtual Reality (VR), Web Analytics, SaaS Product Management, Data Science Product Manager, Analytics, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), eCommerce, eCommerce UI, eCommerce Platforms, eCommerce Design, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Project Management, User Stories, Direct to Consumer (D2C), Agile Leadership, Product Leadership, Team Leadership, Cross-functional Collaboration, Web Applications, Web Development, User Behavior, Data Management, Business Intelligence (BI) Platforms, Startups, SQL, Education, Product Research, Product Planning, Android, Mobile UI, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Machine Vision, Google Cloud Machine Learning, Marketing, Churn Management, Data Science, Remote Team Leadership, Content Strategy, Content Creation, Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Product Evangelism, Mobile Data, Open Data, Databases, Process Modeling, Process Flows, Business Process Management (BPM), Salesforce, Edtech Design, Video on Demand (VOD), Apps, A/B Testing, User Onboarding, Stakeholder Management, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Customer Research, Software Development, Third-party Management, Microsoft Office, Industry Standards, Sales Pipelines, Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS), Support Vector Machines (SVM), Web Marketing, SEO Marketing, Adobe Experience Design (XD), Adobe Photoshop, Data, Big Data, Data Scraping, Business Advisory, Business Services, Business Systems, Finance, Lean UX, Lean IT, Lean Canvas, Lean Startups, Lean Experiments, Lean Project Management, Lean Product Development, Mobile Banking, UX Flows, UX Thinking, UX Analysis, Web UX, User Interviews, UI Design, Web UI, Crypto, Cryptocurrency, Mobile Apps, Mobile Prototypes, Mobile Games, Applications, UX Research, Growth Marketing, Growth Hacking, Growth Strategy, Startup Growth Strategy Development, International Growth, Agile Data Science, Technical Project Management, Analysis, Process Analysis, Customer Analysis, CRM Design, CRM Systems, Salesforce API, Sales, Sales Growth, Dashboards, Dashboard Development, MySQL, Enterprise SaaS, SaaS Design, Data Engineering, B2B, B2B Sales Pipeline, B2B Partnerships, B2B Lead Generation, Business to Business (B2B), Data Pipelines, Data Processing, Performance Marketing, Website Performance, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Performance Management, Sales Operations, Sales Funnel, Software Sales, User Flows, Wireframing, Wireframe to Product, Annotated Wireframes, Google, Requirements Matrices, Requirements & Specifications, User Requirements, Business Requirements, System Requirements, Design Requirements, Functional Requirements, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Workshops, Workshop Facilitation, Ideation Workshops, Discovery Workshops, On-page SEO, Business Operations, Product Operations, Operations Management, Operations Strategy, CRM Configuration, Digital Marketing Strategy, Digital Marketing Design, WordPress, Facebook Pixel, Google Shopping, Facebook Ads, Facebook Video Ads, YouTube Marketing, Airtable, People Management, Shopify API, Facebook API, TikTok Ads, Market Research, SAP, SAP ERP, ERP Implementation, Request for Proposal (RFP), Technical Requirements, UI Specifications, UX Specifications, Design Specifications, Test Specifications, Functional Specifications, Software Requirements Specifications (SRS), Partnerships

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