Dan Ford
Senior product manager with more than 20 years broad applications management experience who excels at leading cross-functional teams and
coordinating multiple projects.
Exceptional ability to partner with engineering based on experience both as senior product manager and as senior engineering manager.
Solid experience in all aspects of product management from requirements through launch; product positioning and value proposition definition;
competitive analysis.
Excellent communicator.
Passionate product champion.
Successfully delivered software as a service (SaaS) web applications as well as traditional enterprise applications.
Deep expertise with content management applications, including workflow, searching metadata and full text,
file viewing and markup.
Domain experience in E-Discovery,E-Learning, and PDM/PLM.
Professional Experience
CT Summation, San Francisco, California 6/2008 – 7/2010
Senior Product Manager
CT Summation provides litigation support solutions to legal professionals in law firms and corporations.
I am responsible for a new web-based product line targeting new markets and market expansion for SaaS and on-premises deployment.
In 7/2010 CT Summation was acquired by AccessData.
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Defined multi-year product roadmap.
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Wrote requirements for major enhancements: search and search metrics;
exact/near-duplicate documents and email thread support; Unicode.
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Created cross-functional launch plan with product marketing, training,
sales, and customer support. Personally provided demo scripts, ROI
calculator for Sales, competitive positioning, and marketing
collateral.
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Company representative to the EDRM organization's Search project.
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Performed competitive and market analysis.
CaseCentral, San Francisco, California 2002 – 5/2008
Senior Product Manager
CaseCentral provides a SaaS solution for corporations and the law firms that serve them.
The products provide advanced Electronic Discovery search and workflow capabilities for repositories of
hundreds of terabytes of data.
Responsible for all CaseCentral products and data services, 67% of company revenue.
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Launched major new version of flagship product delivering a solution to
lowers litigation costs and reduce risks for customers.
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Responsible for complete product life-cycle from requirements through launch.
Managed cross-functional teams to deliver new services.
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Manage partner integrations to deliver new service offerings.
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Work closely with Sales, supporting activities with prospects and customers, training, etc.
Created an interactive ROI model to support cost reduction claims.
gForce Systems, Cupertino, California 2000 – 2001
Product Manager
gForce Systems was a small start-up that provided hosted (SaaS) enterprise
e-learning services until acquired by Docent in 2001. Successfully
managed the on time released of two new products from inception to
commercial release. Department-wide responsibilities as well as
direct responsibility for specific products, including:
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Company's representative to a consortium of e-Learning companies established by Cisco.
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Authored technical white paper detailing product architecture.
Developed a spreadsheet model of system performance used for sales quotes.
Trained Sales and advised customers on deployment topologies.
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Managed direct reports.
Responsible for recruiting for the entire department; hired staff on-time to keep projects on schedule.
Sherpa Corp., Milpitas, California 1989 – 2000
Sherpa provided a distributed
ECM (Enterprise Content Management) application with Product
Lifecycle Management services. A small private company when I joined,
Sherpa grew many times larger and opened offices across Europe. I
held multiple roles with increasing responsibility at Sherpa. In 1998
Sherpa was acquired by INSO Corp, and then sold by INSO in 2000.
Senior Program Manager,
1998–2000
Program Manager for the company’s next-generation product, an
enterprise-scale document management application with flexible
workflow capabilities. Responsible for on-time delivery of a
high-quality product by team of 30 people in all disciplines.
Supervised senior technical domain experts; mentored junior
contributors.
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Created and maintained the project schedule. Regularly presented project status to CEO, CTO, and VP Eng.
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Defined the processes used for the project. Established metrics for tracking quality of both the user interface and server components.
Senior Product Manager,
1995–1997
Product manager of 6 products that generated over 50% of the company’s revenue.
Owner of the company product roadmap.
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Launched new Internet products, beating competing products to market and making the company a leader in the industry’s move to web-enabled
content management.
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Marketing’s representative on the corporate Technical Advisory Board, an advisory body of key customers.
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Frequent speaker at annual European and North American User Group conferences.
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Trained as auditor for the company’s successful program to achieve ISO 9001 certification for all international operations.
Auditor for Engineering and Customer Support departments.
Software Development Manager,
1992–1995
First-line engineering manager responsible for 5 distinct products, both end user applications
for document management and integrations with third-party applications.
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Responsible for staff of 10, including recruiting, performance reviews, training, and annual budgeting.
Project leader for all projects developed within the group.
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Member of team that developed key strategy for customer migration from current product line to future products.
The resulting 3-year strategy enabled the company to achieve higher revenues from current customers adopting new products.
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Actively managed business partners delivering software for outsourced components and integration projects.
Software Engineer,
1989–1991
Responsible for support for and enhancements to existing product built on a
relational database in a client-server environment.
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Designed and implemented enhancements per project plans.
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Member of 3-person team implementing next generation application.
This product would become the lead product for the company for the next 5 years.
Education
Pomona College, Claremont, California
BA, Mathematics with CS
emphasis
Professional Training
Market Research Best
Practices
Customer Intimacy: Contextual Design, Market Sizing and
Segmentation
Project Management and Project Leadership
Building
High-Performance Software Teams
The Job of the Marketing
Professional
Effective Communicating
Situational Leadership
Java Programming
Organizations
Silicon Valley Product
Management Association
National Genealogical Society,
New England Historic Genealogical Society
Awards
1996 Sherpa Award. For
constant dedication and devotion to getting the job done with a
spirit of willingness, cheerfulness and confidence while
demonstrating the principles of commitment, communication and
cooperation.
1995 Outstanding Contribution Award. For
outstanding accomplishments in 1995.
1994 Teamwork Award.
For demonstration of exemplary teamwork and cooperation with multiple
departments to accomplish company goals.
1993 Sherpa Award.
For constant dedication and devotion to getting the job done with a
spirit of willingness, cheerfulness and confidence.
1992
Outstanding Contribution Award. For outstanding contributions by
managing the release of Sherpa/View 1.0.
1991 President’s
Award. For outstanding achievement in meeting product development
schedules for PIMS.
1991 Teamwork Award. For demonstration
of exemplary teamwork and cooperation with multiple departments in
getting our product releases on schedule all year to accomplish
company goals.
1990 President’s Award. For
outstanding team effort in developing and delivering the PIMS 1.0
release on time.