Alexander Taskov Email & Phone Number

London, Gb

London, England, United Kingdom

I am in charge of an in-house consulting unit that actively reduces operational inefficiencies and increases the scalability of the business. My team discovers problem areas, estimates the size of the opportunity, builds a business case, forms a team around the solution, and manages the solution's delivery. In the process we work closely with Operations, Product, and Engineering.I am personally responsible for making sure my team works on projects that present the biggest opportunity and align with company OKRs. I guide my team from building a problem statement to setting up success metrics, determining go/no-go, and ultimately delivering the final solution.Here's a few examples of projects I've managed on so far:• Revamping (and essentially gamifying) Indeed Flex's worker performance management system to improve our ability to enforce penalties when rulebreaks occur, while also reducing the lead time and touch points required to resolve worker performance cases.• Standardizing and automating the company's entire onboarding interview process, hence improving our ability to identify and rapidly onboard the best candidates in our jobseeker funnel.• Building a resource planning tool from the ground up to enable Operations to accurately predict the required headcount for each of its teams across the year.• Introducing changes to how we pay workers their holiday pay to offer an industry-leading experience in terms of payment speed.

London, England, United Kingdom

Consulting the wellness brand Deja in the domain of operations. Responsibilities include but are not limited to:• Ensuring the continuous flow of stocks and finished goods within the company's supply chain.• Supporting the launch of two new variants to the company's food supplement product range.• Managing the launch of a new product range consisting of three supplement powders.• Optimizing the company's supply chain and finding opportunities for cost reductions.• Assisting the CEO with building a strong long-term vision for the company.

London, England, United Kingdom

First employee of UK's first video-powered job marketplace for entry-level workers, reporting directly to the COO. Key areas of responsibility:• Ensuring the successful sourcing of candidates for our B2B clients as per their weekly needs.• Managing the Talent Sourcing team consisting of 10 recruiters in terms of objectives, efficiency, workload, and prioritization.• Managing the Marketing team consisting of two people and observing digital marketing practices and the creation of video assets.• Assisting with the advancement of Swivel's product by translating client feedback into improvement proposals for the tech team.• Performing in-depth analysis into the company's spending and candidate sourcing practices.

London, England, United Kingdom

Founder & creator of ReFit - a mobile app that helps people reach their fitness goals through affordable remote personal training. I assumed the role of CEO, recruited a team, and created an MVP for the service which included a real-life simulation with paying customers. I also built our pitch and created detailed five-year financial projections.

London, England, United Kingdom

I was a part of Antler's third London cohort. I'm one of 80 people selected from a pool of 3030 applicants from all over the globe with the task of building the next wave of successful tech ventures. I spent my time building strong founding teams, uncovering significant market gaps, creating solutions to address those gaps, and taking the startups from zero to one.

Hamburg Area, Germany

Co-founded, self-funded, and launched the successful startup CrunchTime. Responsible for strategic decision making and the continuous flow of information and products from order placement to finished goods dispatch, as well as the continuous improvement of both product and service. Key areas of responsibility: • The creation and successful implementation of the company vision and strategy • The procurement and inventory management of all goods and packaging elements • The production in its entirely, as well as the dispatch of completed orders and their successful delivery • All IT, including but not limited to the company website, online store, third party software, and the development of a supplementary nutritional assistant in the form of an app • Recruiting, developing, and growing a team of professionals in all areas of the business • Assumed the position of CEO during the exit sale of the business in the period Jun-Dec 2019

Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

Managed a 150M euro program consisting of six individual innovation projects, all in the field of next generation tobacco products, namely heated tobacco.• Responsible for the budget control and timelines at both project and program level• Organized weekly scrum meetings to track progress, manage risks & expectations, and flag problems• Represented the program in front of upper management and was accountable for its progress• Oversaw a successful trial launch in two test markets (Germany & Japan) ahead of a full-scale launch planned for early 2019.

Hamburg, Germany

Responsible for the organization and timely execution of a 300K euro optimization project aimed at reducing process waste in all new product launches.• Played an active part in collecting business requirements, outlined a plan with the project customer, and put together a comprehensible execution plan• Controlled the budget and engaged all stakeholder groups (Project Management, Finance, IT, and the external IT service providers) on a regular basis to provide the transparency and motivation required to complete the project• Had a direct influence on the format of the solution due to my in-depth knowledge of the product launch process• Ensured the delivery of an MVP ahead of schedule and within budget before handing the project over for execution

Hamburg Area, Germany

Responsible for coordinating the compliance of the company's European portfolio with new EU and national legislation, namely the EU Tobacco Products Directive II - a 300M euro project.• Translated business requirements into action plans to support high-level decision making.• Coordinated between multiple constituents of the company.• Identified bottlenecks and risks and developed sustainable solutions, while creating progress reports and delivering results to top management.• Was responsible for the total compliance of ITG’s European portfolio of over 3,000 products by the EU members’ implementation dates.Key achievements:• Developed Ark – interactive database of entire portfolio of the company with the ability to track each of the company’s 8,000 SKUs on its path to legislative compliance.• Developed Rosetta – ITG’s first tool to track all commercial activities within the company to manage internal and external capacities to curb the formation of bottlenecks.• Developed Prophet – a retro-planning tool that sets and communicates milestones for Product Dev, Procurement, and Production to secure the timely delivery of finished goods for ITG’s markets.• Achieved a portfolio rationalization of 25% by facilitating the migration of underperforming SKUs into ITG’s leading brands – an activity that is credited as one of several main factors behind the doubling of ITG’s share price between Feb 2014 and Feb 2016.

Hamburg, Germany

Responsible for cost and process optimizations during turbulent product launches and changeovers. Led a team of four that provided stakeholders with various scenario analyses to determine the best course of action. Executed multiple projects with a different priority simultaneously. Did regular budget tracking and target setting for the team. Reported deliverables to management on a monthly basis.Key achievements:• Team achieved a total of 5.1m EUR of savings in the year of 2013 alone, out of which I am personally responsible for 2.3m. The saved money was reinvested into new marketing activities.• Drove the delisting of a major ITG brand (Davidoff iD) due to its underperformance. Successfully negotiated the write-off of 1.2m EUR worth of pack materials between Marketing, Production, and Sales, hence preventing potential estimated costs of 1.5m over 5 years.

Bremen Area, Germany

Teaching Assistant for the university course “Managing Strategies and Innovations in Logistics” by Prof. Dr. Michael Hülsmann. Assisting with preparing presentations on the course material. Teaching the course participants in tutorial sessions to apply theory in practice through case studies.

Málaga Area, Spain

Worked in the Customer Service (Logistics) department. Controlled stock levels of film capacitors, managed sample requests from customers. Assisted in creating the short-term production program and developed long-term production forecasts for the production line. Performed maintenance in SAP. Recruited and trained a replacement for my position.Key achievement:> Developed a process for rescheduling procurement orders in SAP to reduce the lead time of materials from the suppliers by an average of 3 days per order. The process was adopted by the entire team of operations planners.

Mannheim Area, Germany

Junior Consultant in the company’s business logistics department. Heavily involved in a key benchmarking project on ocean freight. Performed market research and analyses, observed carrier capacity development, and managed stakeholder expectations, all while delivering regular reports to management. Ensured the timely completion of the project and a successful closing workshop with the clients.Key achievement:> In 2010 I used the results as the foundation for a research paper targeted at the shipping industry on the topic of self-preservation during the 2008-2010 financial crisis. The strategic recommendation identified slow steaming as the main cost saving factor – a method that has become one of the most common ways of reducing the operating costs in sea freight since the crisis.

Master Of Science (Msc), Supply Chain Management & Engineering

Activities and Societies: The Logistics Chain

Bachelor Of Arts (Ba), Supply Chain Management

Activities and Societies: The Logistics Chain

Dual (American-Bulgarian) High School Diploma, Physics

Activities and Societies: Science Club, Theater Group, Computer Graphics Club