Aaron Cooke Email & Phone Number

Austin, Tx, Us

Austin Tx

Austin, Texas Area

As a consultant and small business owner, I am able to provide companies of any size easy access to on-demand product management, business development and technology commercialization services. From startups who can’t justify a full-time product management role to Fortune 500 companies who are looking to streamline their technology commercialization pipeline, I provide immediate results and an excellent return on investment. Many companies constantly struggle with finding the right way to analyze and prioritize customer request, operations needs and NPD against limited engineering resources, but these are problems that can be quickly solved with the right processes and tools. There is no “one size fits all” answer but in my 18 years of experience with product development and launches, I have utilized every process imaginable and understand when and where each technique is effective to ensure efficient product development and a successful launch.

Austin, Texas Area

As a managing director for NOV, I am ultimately responsible for the eVolution RTTC (Real-Time Technologies Centers) business as well as drilling automation software development and commercialization. This includes managing a team of over 30 employees that includes product managers, engineering managers, software developers, QA engineers and support staff. These responsibilities include market analysis, product strategy (for both new and sustained product lines), engineering prioritization, staffing, resource allocation, process improvement, forecasting and P&L.Other key responsibilities included:• Customer sales and onboarding process for complex software-centric digital transformation solutions.• Collaborating and getting buy-in from large cross sections of customer’s organizations such as IT, procurement, operations, drilling engineering, and petrophysical science departments.• Managing teams to map customer’s workflows and requirements to develop complex implementation plans, then implement using project managers to ensure large cross-functional teams delivered on customer commitment.• Business models included SaaS, license, sales and daily rental depending on customer business needs.• Negotiating complex technology license agreements and partnerships to expand customer offerings.• Lead teams to develop bids for complex tenders in response to RFQs by government owned companies in the Middle East, North Africa, and AsiaThis position also includes the management of software engineering responsible for building NOV’s eVolve drilling automation software applications which utilized high-speed downhole and surface sensors streams to automation drilling processes. These applications are designed to deliver significant drilling performance improvements and more importantly predictable results regardless of end user’s skill and experience levels.

Austin, Texas Area

As Product Line Director, I set the strategic direction for a team of product line managers and the product families they managed. The job included understanding both internal and external product requirements, macro market drivers, customer value drivers and working with diverse stakeholders. This included designing strategies to balance sales and operational needs while maximizing market share and profitability. This position required excellent communication skills, the ability to lead without direct authority, understanding the sales environment, deep technical understanding of product lines along with their commercial applications and have good general business acumen. Key responsibilities and accountabilities: • Collaborate with direct reports to create a cohesive three, five, and ten year roadmaps covering all software products for a large business group, then driving the organization to meet these objectives.• Managed the development of mobile strategy and mobile app to establish first mover competitive advantages over rivals.• Collaborate with engineering departments to determine the correct development strategy (Agile, Kanban, Waterfall, and hybrid) for each product and target markets• Forecast (and meet) return on capital employed targets for product families.• In conjunction with Engineering, ensure that appropriate resource exists within the company to for technical support to the sales organization and ensure proper customer support within service groups.• Set priorities relative to the development of new products and sustaining existing product lines to meet current and future revenue goals.• Oversaw the strategies for analytics, machine learning, and big data technologies to leverage data collected by entire product portfolio for sales and NPD. Championed the use of analytics to inform but not drive product decisions.

Austin, Texas Area

Lead, set and communicate the strategic direction of product line family with over $120 million in yearly revenue. These products constituted the bulk of a mission-critical service that collected sensor data at drilling rig sites worldwide and streamed it in real-time to experts both in remote operating centers and ad hoc with mobile devices. This required the understanding of both internal and external product needs and working with the relevant functional groups to assure the product strategy is developed and implemented. Extensive experience traveling internationally working with local sales and support personnel as well as customers from all cultures.Key responsibilities and accountabilities: • Development of products where downtime is not an option and 24/7 support across many time zones is a necessity.• Design strategy to balance sales, operational and business development needs. • Oversaw enterprise-level product planning including identifying new opportunities as well as maintaining a rolling roadmap of projects or iterations.• Created detailed business plans, financial models and executive presentations to assist leadership team in evaluation and prioritization of new product development.• Served as an internal catalyst for mobilizing cross-functional teams to adopt new ideas and strategies in order to support short and long-term strategic objectives in a viable way that extends the user platform.• Defined and delivered product roadmaps that supported internal and external business partners, provided feedback to validate and guide future releases.• Worked with small local development teams as well as large globally distributed development teams in multiple time zones.• Promoted, monitored and guided the activities of the “Product Team” which comprised of representatives from all relevant operational disciplines. (i.e. sales, marketing engineering, manufacturing, service, training and accounting).

Responsible for all field engineering activities, which included management of customer facing testing for new hardware and software products. Additionally this team oversaw the development of user-friendly software installation tools for both domestic and international sales as well as supporting our field technicians within the organization. Responsibilities also included creation and management of the global technical support center that offered 24/7 telephone and remote support to service engineers on rigs. Any failure to provide timely support could result in customers having to idle drilling rigs with lease rates of up to $500,000 per day. This team of 20+ technicians acted as the primary interface between operations and R&D engineering teams to resolve customer hardware and software issues. Worked closely with engineering to develop new products and new software releases that improved uptime and reduced support cost. Developed customer test plans and conduct field testing on all new releases of hardware and software for the business group.

Tyler, Texas Area

Tyler, Texas Area