Nikola Rendulic
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Zagreb, Croatia
Toptal member since June 26, 2019
With robust communication and leadership skills, PMI-ACP and PMP, Nikola is a senior technical PM, PgM, product manager, and a BA who excels at building performing virtual teams, maximizing value delivery, applying the most effective methodologies, and bridging the gap between business and IT. He is skilled in digital transformations, data and integrations, and cloud computing. Nikola has led strategic projects for Aveva, UPC, EDF, Telefonica/O2, British Gas, Mastercard, Sophos, and Erste Bank.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Atlassian Suite
- Business Analysis
- Digital Transformation Program Management
- Jira
- Salesforce
- Solution Design
- Technical Project Management
Work Experience
Data and Integrations Product Owner, Business Analyst, Project Manager, and Program Manager
AVEVA
- Joined as a recovery project manager to recover the data project within a big digital transformation program and soon became responsible for three delivery teams dealing with consolidating customer and product data and E2E master data integrations.
- Cleansed a pool of 300,000 customer accounts and established robust data quality, matching, merging, and deduplication processes using market-leading master data solutions.
- Acted often as a BA/SA to scope and secure designs for different scope items (customer lifecycle, product lifecycle, across Salesforce, MDM, Oracle, and other key systems).
eCommerce Project Manager
Toptal Client
- Joined as a project manager to support the rollout of an eCommerce solution in CEE countries, quickly ramped up the delivery activities on delayed projects, and adopted consumer flows and market specifics.
- Ensured that the business and engineering teams adopted common tooling and processes and that the governance processes supported the collaboration and quick resolution of any impediment.
- Gained knowledge about consumer flows, digital ecosystem, components, integrations, rollout, and localization processes to support market teams taking ownership over the required market work.
Senior Product Manager | Project Director
Cognism
- Defined enterprise product offering and roadmap to enhance enterprise marketing and sales processes built on market-leading CRMs, sales engagement, and marketing automation tools.
- Ensured on-time delivery of roadmap items through managing a team of front-end and back-end engineers, designers, QA, and product owners and data analysis.
- Established data and value-driven product management practices, including predictable, Agile delivery practices.
Engagement Manager | Digital Transformation Leader
Maven Mule
- Oversaw Agile coaching, driving team enablement and setting personal development goals.
- Performed a business analysis (as-is and to-be process definitions, requirement gathering, backlog refinement, and prioritization).
- Defined product roadmaps, created and refined backlogs, verified solution designs (object modeling, system landscape, and API definition), and acted as a product owner.
- Defined MVPs, drove estimations and planning, and built project roadmaps.
- Oversaw engagement management and customer success.
- Managed the delivery of the eCommerce site and acted as a proxy product owner. Drove road mapping, creation, and refinement of the backlog and acted as a scrum master for the cross-functional delivery team.
- Handled project contracts, budget management, and invoicing.
- Oversaw the Atlassian suite (Service Desk, Jira, Confluence) setup, administration, and optimization for support services and project work.
- Defined company processes (marketing, sales, office administration, operations, discovery and designs, development and release management, and finances), and ISO 9001 (QMS) and ISO 27001 (ISMS) certifications.
- Oversaw marketing and sales operations (email campaigns automation, LinkedIn campaigns, lead and opportunity management, forecasting, and pipeline management).
Senior Technical PM | Managing Consultant | Head of PMO
CloudSense
- Oversaw and ran discovery, design and planning workshops.
- Managed a professional services (consultancy) team of 60+ IT consultants (developers, SAs, BAs, and PMs).
- Set and adopted global delivery methodologies (agile, PM policy, BA framework, SA templates, development standards, release management).
- Served as a recovery director and aided the swift recovery of troubled Salesforce transformation projects.
- Acted as an agile coach for big programs and quickly built performant delivery teams.
- Managed resources, portfolios, contracts, and project budgets.
- Drove creation, refinement, prioritization, and estimation of product backlogs and created the timeline and staffing plans.
- Translated business requirements into solution designs and technical requirements.
- Advocated for the adoption of the Jira and Atlassian suite, transparency through Jira reporting and best practices.
- Handled the Atlassian suite (Service Desk, Jira, Confluence) setup, administration, and optimizations, for support services and project work.
Senior Project Manager | Head of PMO
Erste Bank
- Ran strategic transformation projects, across multiple business units, with multiple vendors and large IT team.
- Translated business requirements into technical requirements.
- Managed the project portfolio, ensured the adoption of common PM policy and ensured consistent reporting toward the board on all projects.
- Drove discovery, design, and planning workshops with business, IT, and vendors.
- Ran business process analysis and definition of as-is and to-be processes, defined wireframes, together with business and technical requirements.
Product Manager for eChannels
Erste Bank
- Oversaw the delivery of new services on eChannels.
- Defined product/service roadmaps.
- Established the business requirements for the IT team.
- Carried out vendor management.
Developer | Test Manager
NetworkStar Kate
- Composed code in .NET.
- Developed test scripts.
- Implemented test automation.
- Provided end user training sessions.
- Produced user guides and technical documentation (UML).
Project History
Enterprise-ready Product Offering
Defined product strategy for enterprise clients, how products should fit into enterprise client journeys and integrate with market-leading CRMs, marketing, and sales engagement tools. Redefined integration strategy. Secured roadmap delivery.
Salesforce App for Data Intelligence
Hardened and made user journeys leaner. Minimized client churn. Implemented app analytics to understand product usage. Automated the release process.
Salesforce Native eCommerce Solution
https://www.foxtrail.chMigrated a tourist website to Salesforce and streamlined the eCommerce and mobile app sales journeys into a seamless UX.
Tasks Accomplished:
• Driven process workshops, requirements definition and refinement sessions with the client and developers
• In only few months with small relatively inexperienced team built CMS capability on Salesforce,
• Released a new websites and mobile application for client's different business units in different countries.
• Introduced a payment gateway and multi-currency support
• Made the product management processes fully configurable and aligned with out-of-the-box Salesforce practices.
ROLES: Scrum Master | Success Manager | Business Analyst
UPC Telecom B2B Digital Transformation (Switzerland)
https://www.upc.ch/en/business/Served as a recovery PM—stabilizing and delivering a successful project that previously had issues and inadequate governance.
ROLE: Recovery PM
EDF (Electricity de France) Luminus B2C Digital Transformation
Served as a recover PM and took over the management of a B2C project and in months—rolling out a solution with great success.
The project ended with significant success. As a result of the B2C digital transformation success, CloudSense was given a B2B project, an upsell of major licenses, and a longterm support contract.
ROLE: Recovery PM by CloudSense
Salesforce Professional Services Website
http://mavenmule.comIn a very short time and with a small team, rebranded a ISV company, released a modern, responsive web, and set SMM strategy.
Tasks accomplished:
• Promptly found the design studio.
• Collaborated successfully with the MavenMule executive team.
• Created the whole content for the new website.
• Contracted the delivery of key components related to web, rebranding, SMM, and SEO.
• Brought the new website to life in only a few months.
Telefonica Germany M2M Digital Transformation
Delivered an M2M digital transformation project in an extremely short timeframe, transforming an E2E lead-to-cash process.
ROLE: Project Manager (PM) and Business Analyst (BA)
Professional Services Transformation (PSA)
200 FTE professional services organization (IT and business consultants) was transformed with a new PSA in only three months.
I delivered all of the definition and adoption aspects of the project mostly on my own (requirements, testing, rollout, training) while only 20 MD of external PSA consultants carried out the implementation.
Puma Energy Digital Transformation
Served as a recovery manager—stabilizing the project and achieving a global rollout on time.
The project included more than 100 consultants (business and IT) globally. As the project ended in trouble, I was asked to recover one keystream. The solution was successfully rolled out after a few months of my involvement.
Corporate eBanking Solution (MultiCash)
Managed and successfully implemented a new eBanking channel for large enterprise group clients.
Self-service Banking Zones
Managed the opening first self-service zones for a bank, and introduced new self-service devices for retail customers.
I managed the opening of first self-service zones for the bank and introduced new self-service devices for retail customers (deposit ATMs, non-cash machines with miscellaneous eServices).
eCommerce Global Digital Ecosystem
Launched and managed the rollout of an eCommerce ecosystem into several CEE markets.
After a late start, the markets managed to compensate for delays during the preparation phase and started driving the overall digital ecosystem road mapping.
Enterprise Data
Implemented master data solutions, data governance, and data quality best practices for a customer with 300,000 accounts in Salesforce and an extensive product portfolio.
Education
Diploma Study in Management (Mini MBA) Degree in Business Administration
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Zagreb, Croatia
Master's Degree in Telecommunications and Informatics
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing - Zagreb, Croatia
Certifications
PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Salesforce ADM 201
Salesforce
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Project Risk Management
Krauthammer International
Skills
Tools
Jira, Salesforce, Excel 2016, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Confluence, Microsoft Project, Atlassian Suite, Atlassian, Trello, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Adobe Target, Navision
Paradigms
Scrum, Agile Product Management, B2B, Agile Project Management, Agile, Organizational Change Management (OCM), B2C, DevOps, Azure DevOps
Industry Expertise
Banking & Finance, Professional Services, Telecommunications, Utilities
Platforms
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Force.com IDE, Magento, Oracle, Marketo
Other
Sales Operations, Process Management, Scrum Master, Project Management Professional (PMP), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), Project Management Office (PMO), Project Portfolio Management (PPM), MIS Reporting, Digital Transformation, Software Project Management, Project Rescue, Resource Management, Project Budget Management, Team Management, CRM Systems, Test Management, Contract Management, Business Analysis, Project Management, Business Transformation, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Digital Project Management, Waterfall Methodology, Requirements, Business Requirements, Requirements & Specifications, User Requirements, Agile Transformation, User Stories, Technical Requirements, Project Scheduling, Project Scoping, Risk Management, Team Leadership, Remote Team Leadership, PMO, Technical Project Management, Finance, Email Marketing, Business Process Management (BPM), Startup Consulting, Information & Communications Technology (ICT), Roadmaps, Vendor Management, Contract, Digital Product Management, Digital Transformation Program Management, Marketing Automation, Stakeholder Management, Web Project Management, Product Ownership, Data Governance, Data Quality, Agile Coaching, SaaS, Process Modeling, Business Process Modeling, Strategy Planning, Business Intelligence (BI), Solution Architecture, Rational Unified Process (RUP), Hybrid Project Management, Website CMS, SMM, eCommerce Management, Software as a Service (SaaS), Tourism, Solution Design, System Integration, APIs, Payment Gateways, Backlog Management, Estimations, Product Roadmaps, Product Management, Product Discovery, Delivery, Global Team Management, IT Project Management, Backlog Grooming, Ideation, IT Strategy, Web UX, Design, Adobe Campaign, IT Service Management (ITSM), ISO 9001, ISO 27001, eCommerce, Informatica, Master Data Management (MDM), Marketing, Data, ERP Implementation, CPQ, Zuora
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