Ben Canning Email & Phone Number

Kirkland, Wa, Us

Bellevue, Wa, Us

At Smartsheet, I have held progressive leadership roles culminating in my current position as SVP of Product Experiences. Over the past six years, I’ve led Product Management, Research, and UX Design, driving the company’s transformation from a $400 million private entity to a publicly traded leader with over $1 billion in ARR. My efforts have been centered on fostering a culture of innovation, excellence, and customer-centricity.Key Achievements:Accountable for growth and retention of Emerging Segment (<200ee). Drove a shift to product-led sales to enable customers of all sizes to easily discover value and drive business expansion, resulting in substantial increases in NDRR and reduction in cost of sale. Launched numerous new products including a complete overhaul of the user experience and introduced WorkApps, a no-code app builder, significantly expanding market reach and customer engagement. Integrated two major acquisitions to expand market reach into Content and Resource Management. Created and led Smartsheet's AI strategy, leading to the launch of multiple new AI capabilities launched in year one and used by over 50% of Smartsheet Enterprise customers. Built and nurtured a high-performing, diverse team, achieving a 50% gender balance in leadership and fostering a collaborative environment focused on delivering exceptional customer outcomes.Directed strategic planning efforts across sales, marketing, and engineering to drive company-wide alignment and growth, developing a multi-year product roadmap and enabling rapid scale.Served as a key public face of Smartsheet, delivering keynote speeches and leading high-profile analyst engagements to strengthen the brand and build strategic partnerships with Fortune 100 companies.

Redmond, Washington, Us

I led Product Management for Microsoft Teams - the fastest growing product at Microsoft which is transforming the way Teams collaborate and communicate. Our team crafted a new way for groups to work together - more efficient, more fun, more effective. I focused on re-imagining group-centric communications for the modern workplace, bringing AI-enhanced devices to every workspace, and helping over 20 million Skype for Business customers navigate a smooth transition to Microsoft Teams. My team and were accountable for transforming Microsoft Teams into the leading Unified Communications solution in the world by developing our cloud business into a fully integrated global communications solution meeting the needs of business large and small. This is now a $2bln+ per year business with 10's of millions of paying customers. • Brought integrated carrier services to O365, offering regulated dial tone in over 10 countries.• Launched Global Audio Conferencing Services, growing from 0 to 90 countries in 9 months.• Launched Skype Broadcast Meetings, enabling businesses to ‘go live’ and reach thousands• Launched Cloud PBX service, enabling businesses to eliminate ageing and costly PBX solutions• Launched Skype Room Systems, with 10 of thousands of devices deployed at enterprises worldwide.

Redmond, Washington, Us

As Group Product Manager for SharePoint, I led efforts to evolve SharePoint into a key component of Office 365, helping to establish Microsoft’s early presence in the cloud services market. SharePoint became one of the foundational elements of Office 365, supporting millions of users and businesses worldwide.Key Achievements:• Guided the transition from an on-premises product to a cloud-based solution, positioning SharePoint as a cornerstone of Office 365 at its launch and expanding its user base globally.• Directed the overhaul of service infrastructure, moving from SQL to unstructured storage in Azure, which improved scalability, reduced costs, and enhanced security.• Introduced a dev-ops model to streamline operations, reducing deployment times and increasing agility, enabling rapid feature updates and higher service resilience.• Led cross-functional teams to develop robust telemetry and monitoring systems, ensuring high availability and performance at a massive scale.• Played a crucial role in making SharePoint one of the three major pillars of Office 365, driving enterprise collaboration and reinforcing Microsoft’s leadership in cloud solutions.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Led the team responsible for making sure that Microsoft Office was Secure, Reliable and Fast.Developed one of the first global-scale Big Data platforms to gather and analyze Reliability and Usage data for Microsoft products world wide. In handling hundreds of millions of submissions per day we revolutionized software development at Microsoft and drove massive reliability improvements in products used by a billion people every day. The revamping of the Office UX and introduction of the Ribbon relied on the data we provided. Also led the development of innovative suite of security features in Word, Excel, PowerPoint that turned the tide on the bad guys trying to use Office as an attack vector - Protected Mode and GateKeeper closed the doors on malware vendors and forced them to look elsewhere.In this role I have helped develop industry leading solutions for identifying and reporting problems encountered by Microsoft products in real world usage, helping us to dramatically improve the overall reliability and stability of our products.

Redmond, Washington, Us

'Ship Driver' for the entire Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 releases. Herded the Cats across as many as 40 distinct engineering teams (Word, Excel, SharePoint...) comprised of thousands of engineers trying to launch the suite on a single date projected years in advance. Drove overall project schedule, progress metrics and ship room. Identify and Mitigated project risks to keep the Office Battleship moving forward. Act as Ambassador, Counselor and Enforcer as necessary to keep things on track. Office hit the release target within a month in both releases.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Led the Microsoft FrontPage test organization, a web page and web site management product that evolved into Microsoft SharePoint. Responsible for all phases of test planning, design and execution. While in this role I developed and shipped the first E-Commerce Add-in for Microsoft FrontPage, connecting online identity and CRM systems with FrontPage for the first time. Also here I helped manage the team transition from a recent acquisition to Office component - merging the two cultures together and enabling FrontPage to become a successful part of the Office family.

Us

Led quality assurance for #1 Macintosh Personal Information Management software package. Quality Assurance, Test Planning, Software Engineering, Project Management