I am part of the Product Management role team within the Gartner Technology & Service Provider practice. I am researching and writing about the role of the Chief Product Officer (CPO) within software, services and hardware companies including what defines that role today, how it should collaborate across the CXO suite and where is this role going in the future.

QAD Inc. is a leading provider of next generation manufacturing and supply chain solutions in the cloud. My role as the Chief Product Officer is to focus on “what” market problems our products should solve and whether we build, buy or partner to deliver our products and solutions. I manage a team of 60+ product strategists, product managers, product owners and pricing specialists in partnership with our sales, customer success, marketing, technology and engineering peers. Since my arrival we have closed two major strategic and innovative acquisitions as part of the implementation of a build, buy, partner model under my leadership. The first was for Livejourney a process mining and monitoring business and the second for the connected workforce solution category leader, Redzone.

Responsible for corporate and product strategy, marketing and strategic partnerships for the new defi SOLUTIONS which brings together Sagent Auto LLC and defi SOLUTIONS into a single new company backed by Warburg Pincus, Bain Capital Ventures and Fiserv.defi SOLUTIONS is the market leader in originations solutions (35+ million credit apps and 7+ million booked loans and leases), servicing solutions (7+ million loans and leases on our platform) and in business process outsourcing delivery for auto lenders. We invest millions of dollars each year into our solutions to enhance functionality and meet the compliance requirements of our clients.

We led a process to create Sagent Lending Technologies splitting out the Fiserv Lending Solutions business unit under a JV structure with Warburg Pincus. Sagent had the market leading solutions for auto lending in both originations and servicing as well as the largest dedicated auto finance BPO capability in the market. Sagent was also created by including LoanServ the second largest mortgage servicing solution in the US. From the time of creation in March 2018 until August 2019 when we merged the auto solutions of Sagent with defi SOLUTIONS my executive responsibilities were broad and included: product management, marketing, corporate strategy and compliance.

Oversaw the research agenda and the analyst team for HfS across the “As-a-Service Economy”Personally covered the areas of digital services, intelligent automation and business platforms as well as the supply chain and procurement business functions.Over a 25+ year career has focused on his personal skills in authoring thought leadership, developing implementable strategies, executing on acquisitions, driving business development efforts and managing long term investment planning.During this role, Charles spoken widely at industry forums including NASSCOM, ABSL and SIG and had his research covered widely in the business and outsourcing press.

As the Chief Strategy Officer for SourceHOV my responsibilities included: overall corporate strategy; business partnerships and alliances; mergers & acquisitions and international expansion plans.SourceHOV had more than 12,000 employees globally and drives high-value business outcomes for leading organizations including more than half of the Fortune 100.

Responsible for driving the development of the overall BPO strategy and then working with the rest of the BPO Leadership Team to implement this strategy in every chosen offering and industry, including the development of new offerings and M&A pursuits while maintaining our industrialized delivery approaches.