Charles Wigand
Project Manager
Location
Nashville, TN, United States
Toptal Member Since
June 22, 2018
Chuck has been building and managing digital products for startups and enterprises, like IHS Markit, for over 15 years. By combining his project management experience with his product management expertise, Chuck's clients get the full landscape perspective that exceeds their expectations. He typically reports directly to senior leadership, having honed the skills for direct, efficient, and accurate reporting for their needs.
Charles is available for hire
Hire CharlesProject Highlights
XOi Vision | Mobile Legacy
Managed the releases for a live product for field technicians.
XOi Vision | Wearables
Successfully launched an Android app modified for the RealWear HMT-1.
Amazon Mechanical Turks
Saved a projected 50% of data processing costs with Amazon Mechanical Turks.
Education
Associate of Applied Science Degree
ITT Technical Institute
Work Experience
2018 - 2020
Director, Product Development
Uniguest, Inc. (Enterprise)
- Oversaw a product portfolio of 32 products across seven platforms, which includes software, hardware, channel partnerships, and a value-added reseller.
- Interviewed customers and users on needs and expectations for products and experiences they expect, which allows me to run R&D for developing new customer-centric products.
- Developed business-line offerings that allow our customers, and the business, to drive new revenue through target research and strong industry relationships.
- Implemented a product lifecycle process that gives visibility to the business into the software development lifecycle, hardware lifecycle, and value-added reseller (VAR) relationships and offerings.
- Established the product department from scratch, based on a solid foundation of processes to manage and grow software, hardware, and VAR relationships and allow the business to effectively acquire new complementary businesses.
2017 - 2018
Director of Products
XOi Technologies (Startup)
- Led the product and engineering team through the growth and maintenance phases of the company’s current products (web, iOS, Android, wearables).
- Gathered business and user requirements to strategize the roadmap for a complete rebuild of the product suite.
- Developed, via targeted communications with customers and integration partners, a new go-to-market strategy to allow the company to scale, meet revenue goals, and perform for their investors.
- Constructed the model and process that increased the number of platforms the company integrated with from three to eleven which was core to the business.
- Implemented the use of Amazon Mechanical Turks to improve the company's OCR and NLP processing by creating validated customer data that allowed machine learning models to be trained.
2013 - 2017
Director of Product and Data Channel Partnerships
IHS Markit (Enterprise)
- Developed partnerships to strategize software product roadmaps with channel partners for integrating PIERS data into their product suites to create enhanced customer offerings.
- Analyzed and secured market drivers doubling existing partnerships in 2013 by establishing scalable growth model which utilized direct sale and revenue share models.
- Exceeded Q1 2016 revenue quota by 224% and tripled 2013 revenue in 2014.
- Initiated and closed 2014’s largest revenue deal which was the second largest in company history.
2011 - 2013
Director of Product Management
PIERS (Enterprise)
- Led technology product groups through an initial company transformation phase with the sunsetting of legacy offerings and migration of customers to new, purpose-built software offerings.
- Worked directly with sales leadership to open new markets for lead generation SAS products in new verticals which led to a 24% annual increase in revenue.
- Grew the annual subscription revenue $100,000 within the first three months and increased customer retention by 25% through expanded capabilities and targeted product builds.
- Developed a business plan and led the creation of ImporterExporterLeads.com, the company’s first eCommerce presence (built on Heroku with Salesforce)—resulting in first-year revenues of more than $250,000.
- Created multiple sales channels and a white-label program, expanding the reach of customer opportunities, which comprised 30% of site revenues.
2010 - 2011
Senior Product Consultant
PIERS (Enterprise)
- Served, post-acquisition, on a four-member executive management team that designed and implemented business strategies to transform the business and culture into a more lean, profitable and investor-friendly organization.
- Led product managers to revise the existing product roadmaps and move to an agile environment.
2008 - 2010
President
CenTradeX (Startup)
- Drove the company vision and all aspects of business including product development and technology, sales, marketing, and accounting.
- Positioned and negotiated for the acquisition of the company’s software and team by industry leader PIERS after they experienced increased customer attrition due to our targeted software solutions.
- Formed digital product joint venture with a complementary business partner that led to six presales in eight weeks of a beta product which was created to test the new market’s solution acceptance.
2006 - 2008
Vice President of Product Development and IT
CenTradeX (Startup)
- Handled and was responsible for all aspects of product development/management, technology, and the development team.
- Created a flexible web software data delivery platform which improved the responsiveness to market changes and the ability to capitalize on immediate opportunities.
- Redefined a more profitable market position by collaborating with sales, marketing, and existing customer base to develop new, needs-based products which resulted in a steady 33% growth.
2002 - 2005
Owner
Kredo Teknologies (Startup)
- Consulted with startup CEOs and small business owners to develop product roadmaps and go-to-market strategies for technology-based products across various industries.
- Developed and analyzed market data—creating action-oriented plans which drove informed business growth and operations decisions.
- Managed the development of business applications and services while in close collaboration with internal/customer development and marketing teams resulting in multiple end products that were eventually acquired by Yahoo, Ticketmaster, and MedAssets.
2000 - 2002
Senior Product Manager
Alliance Software (Startup)
- Became the lead liaison with the company's largest clients due to my personal technical skills and ability to work on a personal level with clients.
- Was specifically requested by three of the company’s largest clients to manage their accounts and projects.
- Managed and was responsible for the full project life cycle; including requirements gathering, scope development, proposal, application architecture, resource allocation, application development, quality assurance, implementation, and enhancement management.
1999 - 2000
Software Consultant at HCA Healthcare
Robert Half Technologies (Enterprise)
- Worked closely with the client to determine the needs, then planned and built an interactive web-based calendar for scheduling and approving corporate network downtimes by the IT support department. The calendar was used company-wide to keep managers and users updated on the status of their networks.
- Acted as a project manager and senior developer in creating an HR executive profiling web application used by corporation presidents to gather biographical information of top executives for hospitals under their management. Under my direction, the project was successfully finished in half the time originally budgeted.
1999 - 1999
Software Consultant
Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group — DRT Systems (Enterprise)
- Converted a website of static content pages that needed to be maintained by programmers to one that used dynamic database content maintained by content owners, now known as a content management system (CMS.) This was the first time Deloitte & Touche had implemented this kind of system for their sites that supported top clients like General Motors.
- Developed enhancements for an in-house project and resource management system that merged the functionality of Microsoft Project with custom-built components to enable project information to be viewed and managed over the internet. This project was Deloitte's answer to MS Project server before Microsoft released that product.
Project History
XOi Vision | Mobile Legacy
Managed the releases for a live product for field technicians.
Led the product and engineering team through the growth and maintenance phases of the company’s current products (web, iOS, Android, wearables).
XOi Vision | Wearables
Successfully launched an Android app modified for the RealWear HMT-1.
Managed the vendor relationships and the development team to create XOi Vision's on the RealWear HMT-1.
Amazon Mechanical Turks
Saved a projected 50% of data processing costs with Amazon Mechanical Turks.
Implemented the use of Amazon Mechanical Turks to improve the company's OCR and NLP processing by creating validated customer data that allowed machine learning models to be trained.
Education
1991 - 1993
Associate of Applied Science Degree in Computer Aided Design (CAD)
ITT Technical Institute - Nashville, TN, USA