Tonći Jajić, Project Manager in Klis, Croatia
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Tonći Jajić

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Project Manager

Location
Klis, Croatia
Toptal Member Since
October 29, 2019

Tonći is an accomplished project and product manager with over ten years of multi-disciplinary experience. He has helped multiple SME businesses improve their efficiency and maximize their margins. Leveraging his experience, attention to detail, and leadership skills, he has nurtured and managed several large agile teams to timely deliveries of amazing projects and products. Tonći has experience in eCommerce, travel, retail, wholesale, and service industries.

Project Highlights

Quick Parking: Multi-product Software Program (Booking)
As program manager, defined and built several products (platform and eCommerce), ensuring over 30% profit margin YoY growth.
Intertekstil Stanić: ERP Software Development (Retail and Wholesale)
As product owner, I managed the digital transformation of the company to be data-driven by managing their ERP development.
Family.hr: eCommerce site (B2C/Retail)
Led both the development and the operations of a state-of-the-art eCommerce site, ensuring performance above expectations.

Expertise

Work Experience

Product Consultant (Technical Account Manager)

2021 - PRESENT
Automattic
  • Special Projects Team, working to deliver innovative projects for unique people and worthwhile causes.
  • Worked on Applied AI tooling (and prompt engineering) and delivered several Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) prototypes to production.
  • Delivered solutions in eCommerce, blogging, non-profits, NGOs, community outreach, marketing, and more.
  • Consulted on UX and functionality of various companies products and services and delivered dozens of new product prototypes.
  • Helping build a better web and spreading the spirit of open source using a wide range of Automattic products and services (WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, Jetpack, DayOne, Akismet, PocketCasts, Longreads, Simplenote, and more).

iCPO (Interim Chief Product Officer)

2021 - 2021
Index.hr
  • Held a short-term fractional/interim CPO role for index.hr, the largest (1 million daily unique visitors, 77 million monthly unique visitors) news site in Croatia.
  • Audited the company's product and design processes in depth. Founded the product department. Hired talent for the roles within it.
  • Oversaw the launch of one product (a recipe app), the development of another (food guide tasteatlas.com), the reimagining of the 3rd one (classified ads), the ideation of a 4rth one (vegan/superfood app), and improvements of the main one (index.hr).

Director of Operations

2020 - 2021
Alma Flowers
  • Short-lived startup. Moved the company from being stuck in development to making revenue in less than six weeks.
  • Changed the company strategy to a thought-out go-to-market plan focusing on lead generation. Personally managed the initial marketing execution with satisfactory results regarding a positive return on ad spend (ROAS).
  • Set up processes for operations, logistics, and fulfillment, working with farms, vendors, and suppliers to ensure fresh overnight delivery of each item. Optimized cost structure.

Business Strategy Manager

2020 - 2021
Quick Parking
  • Moved from a product position into a more comprehensive (fractional) business managing one. Ten days before COVID-19 hit.
  • Developed and executed successful pivots into SaaS and brokerage that ensured COVID-19 survival of the business (tied to the travel and aviation industry) with continuing operations and development.
  • Improved the company's market position by using a dynamic pricing strategy (lead-based bucket pricing) and expanding market offerings from 15 to 80 airports.
  • Prepared the company and paved the way. fo US market entry.

Senior Product and Project Manager

2018 - 2021
Valcon
  • Acted as a program/product manager for QuickParking (over $20 million in annual revenue), managing a mobility-as-a-service platform product with four projects, three project managers, and over 20 developers.
  • Enabled a 30% increase in sales performance (average order value and conversion rate) through UX testing and conversion rate optimization.
  • Ensured a 50% decrease in operational overhead and an order-of-magnitude increase in API integrator onboarding.
  • Ideated and led the development of auxiliary web app services and devices that impacted important customer satisfaction metrics, such as wait times and self-help availability, and increased the returning customer rate by 20%.
  • Oversaw multiple greenfield MVP projects to fast and successful deliveries as program/project manager and led one MVP development from ideation to MVP user testing in five weeks.

Product and eCommerce Manager

2016 - 2018
Family
  • Led the development of the eCommerce product with a five-month break-even and a 600% three-year ROI from its inception to full market maturity.
  • Managed both eCommerce operations and marketing of the entire brand (eCommerce and brick and mortar), resulting in a 30% growth of initial brand revenue, 10% YoY growth in revenue, and an average of 25% YoY growth in eCommerce.
  • Started additional services initially used by the brand, such as photo studio and copywriting, which we subsequently offered as a separate service that extended business revenue.

CIO (Chief Information Officer)

2013 - 2018
Intertekstil Stanic
  • Managed the entire ERP stack (sales, BI, accounting, invoicing). Ensured an average 15% yearly profit increase over my tenure by leading the continuous overhead and process optimization.
  • Developed ERP to serve the data-driven future of the company, turning it into an off-the-shelf on-premises product and then into a SaaS product.
  • Added around 30 new tools, processes, and opportunities that were previously not present or possible in the company's business.
  • Enabled workforce mobility by standardizing tools and processes and decreased operational idleness to zero by allowing frictionless software use.

Quick Parking: Multi-product Software Program (Booking)

https://www.quickparking.com

As program manager, defined and built several products (platform and eCommerce), ensuring over 30% profit margin YoY growth.

Quick Parking is an international airport parking provider, operating in seven countries and approximately 20 of Europe’s busiest airports. To support their business, rapid growth, and growing operational demands, we built a tailored, scalable, and highly available booking and business management platform. It is complete with public and private API, back office, CMS, parking terminal devices (ramp and payment), and an Android app for use on their shuttle buses, as well as front-facing, highly converting websites.

Thanks to our software, they were able to support new business ventures and integrate new partners. Our websites ensured the migration was painless, showing a more than 30% improvement in revenue performance over previous solutions. I am currently optimizing the products and adding new features.

I acted as the program manager, agile coach, and product owner on this project. I defined the product vision, immediate and future development plans, and communicated them to all stakeholders. I continue to ensure the team is growing and that processes and flow are creating solid, long-term performance.

Intertekstil Stanić: ERP Software Development (Retail and Wholesale)

http://intertekstil-stanic.hr/pocetna/

As product owner, I managed the digital transformation of the company to be data-driven by managing their ERP development.

Intertekstil Stanić is Croatia's leading textile company (import, manufacture, wholesale, and retail).

Based on the existing ERP solution, we've worked closely with the vendor to re-engineer the entire product to suit the company's needs. This included:
- Product catalog module.
- Warehousing, retail, import, coupon, and discount module.
- Business and remote locations module.

Family.hr: eCommerce site (B2C/Retail)

https://www.family.hr

Led both the development and the operations of a state-of-the-art eCommerce site, ensuring performance above expectations.

Family is a home textile retail brand.

Prior to building a web shop, we did an extensive rebranding, and along with building the web shop, started to invest significantly in digital marketing.

The web shop was built and designed by an external agency and the shop itself proved to be a hit, especially when compared to its brick and mortar counterparts.

Alma Flowers: Shopify eCommerce site (B2C/Retail)

As a director of operations, acted as a project manager in ensuring that a small team delivers highly converting eCommerce site built on Shopify platform.

Alma Flowers is an online florist, growing from a pair of family-owned floral shops in the Moorhead-Fargo area. To support the expansion into eCommerce and floral delivery, we've built an eCommerce shop on top of Shopify, with custom UX/UI and specialized for flowers and plants.

The shop was launched within five weeks and, coupled with other business operations, started performing and making revenue fast.

Bleiff: Platform and Portal MVP (fintech HR)

Delivered an under-budgeted and over-scoped MVP on time and on budget, while managing the scope closely with the client.

Bleiff is a fintech initiative that allows knowledge-intensive companies to continue to flourish by keeping knowledge on board. Employees become entrepreneurs and shareholders through the controlled purchase and sale of share certificates or are rewarded with certificates for 'heroic deeds.' Bleiff binds talent, increased engagement brings peace, stability, and offers future prospects. For Bleiff, we are building a fintech platform as well as a user portal.

Quick Parking: eCommerce site (Booking)

https://www.quickparking.com

Led the development of an eCommerce site with 30% better revenue performance compared to the previous solution.

Quick Parking is an international airport parking provider, operating in seven countries and around 20 of Europe’s busiest airports.

They've migrated from a network of smaller, regional (airport-specific) sites to a single site serving all markets.

Our website ensured that the migration was painless, showing a more than 30% improvement in revenue performance over previous solutions. I am currently optimizing the product and adding new features.

I acted as the program manager, agile coach, and product owner on this project. I defined the product vision, immediate and future development plans, and communicated them to all stakeholders. I continue to ensure the team is growing and that processes and flow are creating solid, long-term performance.

Green Parking: eCommerce site (Booking)

https://greenparkingschiphol.nl/

Acted as a product owner for the booking eCommerce website built by an external agency.

Green Parking is an airport parking provider, operating on Amsterdam Schiphol and Brussels Zaventem airports.

Quick Parking: Administration Web Apps

Led the development of UX-oriented BackOffice and CMS web apps to support the client's administration staff.

Quick Parking is an international airport parking provider.

For their administration, operations, finance, and customer care staff, I've managed (as both product owner and project manager) development of a back office and CMS web apps.

Apps were built to highest UX standards, guaranteeing the best possible information flow and shortest user paths to key platform operations.

Intertekstil Stanić: Strategy Companion Analyzer Integration and Migration

Transformed the way the company thinks about data and business analysis.

Over the course of half a year, we integrated SCA and migrated the entire business reporting to it, centralizing the analytics and reports, making it available 24/7. It even does scheduled report mailing to some of our older managers who are not as accustomed to using a computer.

Quick Parking: Android App for Shuttle Bus Drivers

Sped up operations by leading the development of a new, fast, and properly designed Android app for shuttle drivers.

Quick Parking is an international parking provider, offering their customers the shuttle bus service from their parking lots to airports.

To make shuttle bus drivers day-to-day life easier (and to support operations), we're built a bespoke Android app to be used on tablet devices on each bus. Drivers can use these devices for route information, customer information, and booking management.

Family.hr: Retail Chain Standardization

Enabled frictionless human resource movement.

My job was to get everything working during my first months at Intertekstil. That included making sure that all stores (as main data entry points) were following the same specifications. I was also responsible for deciding what the specifications were. Besides that, in the physical space, there were boxes upon boxes of phone cables for fax machines, dial-up payment terminals, and phones. Top-level elements (hardware, OS, software, and procedural standards) also meant sorting and organizing an uncomfortable amount of phone cables.

Typeqast: Support Service Implementation using Jira Service Desk

Successfully managed the setup of the 24/7 support service, including the team, processes, tools, sales, and operations.

Driven by the need to offer 24/7 support to Typeqast's clients, I led the newly formed team into:
- Developed internal processes to support all types of clients and projects.
- Set up multiple instances of Jira service desks and connected them to various tools. Automatized the process (including automatic SLA and automation rules).
- Tested operations, processes, and tools with a large client.
- Scaled and refined them to cover the entire client base.

After the initial setup was complete, I delegated the direct management to a customer service manager (my direct report) and only consulted on Jira-related issues.

Quick Parking: Embedded Windows Terminal Devices

Ensured smoother customer flow on the parking locations by managing the development of the Windows embedded software.

Quick Parking is an international parking provider with a number of parking locations over Europe. On each of these locations, we've built them a minimum of three embedded devices; entry, exit, and a payment terminal.

Using those terminals (with an internet connection, touch screen, license plate recognition, camera feeds, and customer care intercom link) customers can easily drive in, out and pay for their parking.

Quick Parking: Operations Planning Tool

Enabled cost-effective operations planning by overseeing the development of a bespoke built planning tool.

Quick Parking is an international parking provider, with large personnel and vehicle operations on each of 20+ locations.

To better manage the resources (both human and vehicular) needed for each shift/day/location, we've built them a special tool to manage the ideal and most cost-effective scheduling.

Weerman: Business Management Platform

Rescued a doomed year-long project, managing to secure delivery in just three months.

Weerman was one of the five largest flower companies at the Royal Flora Holland flower auction marketplace at Aalsmeer.

For Weerman, we built a platform that was able to integrate with Floral Holland's EasyFlor ERP API and provide data for a range of owned internal and white-label solutions.

Our solutions included a Debtor Registration API, white-label administration, Laravel shop options, among others.

Weerman: Magento eCommerce site (B2B/Wholesale)

Rescued a year-old project and secured MVP delivery in three months.

Weerman was one of the five largest flower companies at the Royal Flora Holland flower auction marketplace at Aalsmeer.

We built a Magento web shop for them that could handle tens of thousands of articles added to the system daily.

Intertekstil Stanić: Embedded Warehouse Devices

Sped up operations and logistics by managing the warehouse workflow and developing purpose-built Windows embedded devices.

Intertekstil Stanić is Croatia's leading textile company (import, manufacture, wholesale, and retail).

To support their growing needs and logistics complexity, I managed (as product manager) a complete overhaul of their warehousing workflows while simultaneously digitalizing it.

Quick Parking: Booking and Business Management Platform

https://www.quickparking.com

Oversaw the multi-year development of a new bespoke platform and ensured smooth migration from the old system to the new one.

Quick Parking is an international airport parking provider. To support their business, rapid growth, and growing operational demands, we’ve built them a tailored, scalable, and highly available booking and business management platform. It is complete with public and private API.

Thanks to our software, they were able to support new business ventures and integrate new partners.

I acted as the program manager, agile coach, and product owner on this project. I defined the product vision, immediate and future development plans, and communicated them to all stakeholders. I continue to ensure the team is growing and that processes and flow are creating solid, long-term performance.
2013 - 2019

Bachelor's Degree in IT Systems Management

Minerva Business School - Dugopolje, Croatia

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