Shu Hiong Tan
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Toptal member since February 9, 2022
Hiong is an innovation coach with 15+ years of experience helping governments, startups, and corporates identify opportunities, create solutions, prototype, and test them working on hands-on product development right through to more strategic initiatives around innovation culture and setting up entities for success. His strengths lie in design thinking, design sprints, and lean startup methodologies to get a deep understanding of users and validate concepts before investing too much into them.
Expertise
- Design Sprints
- Design Thinking
- Discovery Workshops
- Innovation
- Innovation Strategy
- Lean Startups
- User Flows
- Workshop Facilitation
Work Experience
Managing Director
K Squared, The Dot Connect (Self-employed)
- Helped a multinational insurance company develop its digital transformation strategy. They used our initial work and concept to secure substantial funding from their global HQ to proceed to the next level.
- Collaborated with a toll road operator to design and build their consumer-facing app. Subsequently continued to work with them to further enhance the app and grow from zero.
- Worked intensely with a San Francisco-based Series A-funded startup on both their product and overall company strategy.
- Helped numerous SMEs identify potential areas for digital transformation before taking on the design and build of the apps and platforms they required.
- Delivered digital transformation programs on behalf of government entities which included helping teams and companies in the program identify where they could take advantage of digital technologies to further their businesses.
Head of Optimization
TNG Digital Sdn Bhd
- Developed workarounds to develop and deliver MVPs within weeks for two initiatives that would have taken at least six months to build following the product roadmap.
- Initiated and launched a project that delivered a 2% to 77% increase in conversions for various use cases.
- Co-led a project with business intelligence (BI) to track and analyse marketing spend data to ensure greater marketing spend impact per RM moving forward.
- Worked closely with different business units to identify areas of opportunity for optimization using both data and qualitative research. Developed hypotheses around these opportunities and ran experiments to validate or capture more learnings.
Head of Co-creation
kipleX
- Launched a private e-wallet MVP within two weeks, including a web portal and mobile app, to demonstrate our capabilities to the client. Subsequently managed the design and development of the v1.0 rollout customized to the client's unique needs.
- Oversaw the design and rollout of the innovation and design thinking training to the group of companies. Over 200 people went through various levels of training, including some who were trained to become trainers themselves.
- Analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of an existing fintech product, including user interviews and proposed solutions that would refresh the product and make it more relevant to the target users. They increased their revenue 4x the following year.
- Collaborated with a proptech team to help them identify their customers' needs and craft a new positioning that would help them leverage this.
- Facilitated the initial incubation of a new venture that the group wanted to explore, which led to a new business stream.
Project History
New Consumer-facing App | Insurance Industry
Conceptualized, designed, and prototyped a new consumer-facing digital product for a multinational insurance company which they used to pitch to the international HQ and subsequently received substantial funding to develop further.
Based on the work that I delivered, the CEO of the entity was able to go to their international HQ and secure substantial funding that allowed them to hire one of the top global consulting firms to use our work as a base and expand to the broader digital transformation of the organization.
My scope of work included user interviews with consumers and internal staff to identify the pain points and opportunities both for external digital products and internal processes and technologies.
I was then tasked with conceptualizing a new consumer-facing app and working with a design team to create and test prototypes. The brief of the new app was to go beyond simple insurance-related transactions and explore ways to engage with customers on a more regular basis.
Education
Bachelor's Degree with Honors in Media Communications
University of Lincoln - Lincoln, UK
Certifications
Design Sprint Masterclass
AJ&Smart
Design Thinking
HPI School of Design Thinking, Potsdam University
Skills
Tools
Asana, Slack, Zoom, Figma, Google Docs, Google Slides, MURAL, Jira
Paradigms
Design Thinking, B2C, Testing
Other
Miro, Innovation, Design Sprints, Lean Startups, Discovery Workshops, Ideation Workshops, Workshops, User Needs, Innovation Strategy, Ideation, Prototyping, Innovation Workshops, Innovation Management, Communication, Critical Thinking, New Products, Product Coach, Product Delivery, Product Consultant, Startup Consulting, User Flows, Process Innovation, Software Innovation, Product Management, Product Strategy, Startups, Early-stage Startups, User Experience (UX), Mobile Apps, Web & Mobile Applications, Web Applications, Proof of Concept (POC), B2B, Digital Product Management, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Stakeholder Management, User Journeys, New Product Development, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office, Interviewing, Lean, Project Management, Product Development, UX Design, Strategy, Workshop Facilitation, Business Model Canvas, Conceptualization, Wireframing, UX Wireflows, User Interviews, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Competition Research, Mobile UX, Fintech, Budgeting, Web UX, Product Strategy Consultant, Product Leadership, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Software as a Service (SaaS), Big Data, Analytics, MVP Design, Reporting, Consulting, User Experience Design, Growth
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