Career role

Senior Product Manager

Bank of the West · 2017 - 2020

Blurb

Equipment Finance Division

Industry context

Commercial banking and equipment finance division serving equipment manufacturers, dealer partners, internal finance teams, and commercial banking clients.

Business problem

External partners could not easily enter loan information, track application progress, submit required materials, or receive real-time updates. The process was manual, opaque, slow, and difficult to scale.

Products / platforms owned

Partner-facing digital loan origination platform, white-label partner experience, real-time status capabilities, document submission workflows, API-connected origination experience.

Tools / technologies

Liferay Digital Experience Platform (DXP), Equip® loan origination, Jira, Excel, PowerPoint, Figma, Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, etc…)

Primary users / customers

Equipment manufacturers, dealer sales teams, equipment finance partners, internal finance teams, relationship managers, operations teams, and strategic external clients.

Primary responsibilities

Product strategy, roadmap development, customer discovery, requirements definition, vendor selection, backlog creation, stakeholder alignment, business case development, governance review, compliance coordination, rollout planning, and go-to-market strategy.

Key contributions

  • Led discovery and design for a partner-facing digital origination experience.
  • Conducted onsite research with equipment manufacturing sales teams across the U.S.
  • Defined product vision, MVP scope, roadmap, backlog, and release approach.
  • Led integration of a modern digital front end with an on-prem loan origination backend through real-time API integration.
  • Coordinated delivery across business, technology, risk, compliance, legal, marketing, controls, governance, vendors, and executive leadership.

Measurable outcomes

Reduced average loan close time from approximately 45 days to one week, an 83% improvement.

Original description

  • Develop and bring new products to market for the equipment finance division focusing on the partner experience.
  • Be the voice of the customer for the division.
  • Create strategic vision and product roadmap and work closely with stakeholders and engineering teams to deliver new products and feature enhancements.
  • Manage products from concept to launch delivering features iteratively to solve the business challenges.
  • Establish strong ties with partner groups inside the bank including legal, marketing, controls and governance, compliance to streamline product development and delivery.
  • Establish resource funding for ongoing product development.
  • Brought intermediary-focused MVP to market helping partners achieve their goals while allowing the business to retain and grow strategic relationships and cut operational costs.
  • Meeting with end users to understand their needs, goals and pain points, and applying data analysis to gain further insight into current behavior.
  • Managing all aspects of the endeavor, including business case development, vendor selection, design and development, roadmap creation, product backlog, compliance and governance review and approval, rollout planning, and stakeholder management.
  • Additional source notes: owned online equipment finance loan origination; business problem was that external partners were unable to enter loan details, track loan progress, provide materials online, or receive real-time updates. White-label branding was cumbersome and limited partnership opportunities with marquee partners. Led implementation of best-in-class digital experience front end and real-time API integration to on-prem loan origination backend. Reduced time to close loan by 83%, from 45 days to one week.

Role scope

Owned the digital product strategy and delivery for online equipment finance loan origination. Led the product from discovery and business case development through vendor selection, design, backlog creation, implementation, governance review, and go-to-market planning.

Proof points

Transformed complex, regulated, partner-facing workflows from ambiguous business problem to customer research, product strategy, technical integration, launch planning, and measurable operational improvement.