Giselle Cruz

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Responsible for the end-to-end solution delivery of the Digital Commercial Suite for the IQOS e-commerce system for B2C, managing an IT Vendor that consist of 60+ members.
• Analyzed requirements and demands from business and proposed solutions leveraging available IT solutions, processes, and services.
• Managed and drove the demand planning, scoping, and prioritization of the backlog.
• Reviewed high-level solution, user stories, and test scenarios.
• Managed release cycles, making sure UAT and Sanity tests are performed to ensure the quality of the deliverables.
• Managed the vendor resource allocation and budgeting.

Accomplishments:

• Successfully launched the new product, IQOS Iluma i
• In relation to the upcoming 10th year anniversary of IQOS in Japan, analyzed and helped design solution for new initiatives, which required huge changes and development efforts.

• Worked on a project that aimed to develop a headless CMS that will support the redesign of Rakuten Point Club's system architecture.
• Handled requirements definition and led the creation of product strategy (product-market fit, product positioning, etc.).

LINK Desktop acts as a secondary app for LINK Mobile, which is a Rakuten Mobile communication app deeply integrated with the Rakuten ecosystem and other businesses.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Overall ownership of the Desktop Platform as a product.
• Led, managed, and developed a team of 1 product manager and 10 engineers, which includes growing talent through mentoring.
• Drove product strategy, quality mindset, and contributing to innovative ideas across cross-functional teams.
• Managed the product direction while maximizing customer satisfaction.

Accomplishments:

• Helped in driving the production launch amid all issues and concerns from executives.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Managed entire process of Front-end development of Rakuten's Domestic Shopping application and Tools development for both Tech and Business Units.
• Led and managed an engineering team of 13, which includes HR development by maximizing development output and encouraging career growth of members through constant communication and feedback, and proper goal setting.
• Proposed and led technical initiatives.
• Coordinated and worked with cross-functional teams.
• Performed project and task management.
• Acted as Senior Product Manager, managing, and mentoring a team of 2 product managers, and driving the creation of a new CMS.

Accomplishments:

• Created overall strategy and roadmap for Tools Development within the domestic marketplace, which leveraged existing resource and expanded the client base of existing tools and demand for new tool development.
• Took over Page Speed Performance initiative that aimed to improve performance of all domestic app's pages and have revamped the plan and strategy on how to proceed with the project anew.
• Initiated new product involving development of a new Content Management System (CMS) with goal to create a CMS for the entire Rakuten Ichiba that is modern, robust, extensible, and that can support many use cases.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Proactively worked with stakeholders to analyze provided information, especially regarding KPIs, in order to define clear requirements, specify product features and create road map.
• Prioritized requirements and features based on strategy and revenue generation and release them at the right time.
• Utilized customer/client feedback and data as input to improve the services and products.
• Ensured that the project goal is achieved and managing the project team to accomplish it with the required level of quality.
• Applied project management techniques to successfully deliver projects on scope, time and budget.
• Enabled smooth communication among team members and delivering timely status, issue, risk and performance updates to management.

Accomplishments:

• Led a huge and complex development of an Event Management Platform that aimed to automate the previous manual event management workflow. This new system also aimed to improve the events' KPI calculation that normally takes around 2 months to a nearly real-time calculation. I was able to release the 1st phase of the project on time and with good quality.
• Managed the product planning, development, and delivery of the Member Info Renewal Project, which contributed to an estimated annual revenue of 800Million JPY.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Served in the Business Applications Service Delivery and Support division.
• Provided technical leadership for customer projects using consulting methodology.
• Worked effectively with customers and partners though developing strong working relationships and demonstrating value through quality of deliverable.

Accomplishments:

• Developed an improved version of a current customer portal site that has richer UI and improved UX using the latest technologies such as Bootstrap and AngularJS

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Created project proposals and present them to clients.
• Product management and project management
• Evaluated and reviewed the output of team members.
• Directly communicated with Japanese clients regarding a project's status and at times enter into negotiations.

Accomplishments:

• Involved in over 10 successful projects, with several projects requiring working onsite in some of Japan's top IT companies.
• Managed projects with customer satisfaction ratings far exceeding company standards
• Received commendations in Project Leadership

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Served in the Business Applications division.
• Development using Microsoft and Open-Source technologies, often web applications.
• Performed tasks ranging from design, prototyping, development, testing, and maintenance