Ryan Schembri Email & Phone Number

Ta’ Xbiex, Mt

Ta’ Xbiex, Mt

London, Gb

As the CPO at Begame Group, I formed part of the senior management team, having accountability for the performance of the company’s products and leading the product team (covering product management, product design, and research). My main responsibilities in this role included:• Defining and championing the company’s product strategy (B2C & B2B).• Managing the overall product development roadmap and establishing the key priorities.• Defining the various product lines/verticals and establishing resource allocation for each.• Defining and optimising the product organisation and processes, as well as identifying and championing the tools and services required to support product operations.• Driving a data-led approach to product development through user and competitor research and testing.• Developing a strong product team (product managers, UX/UI designers, and UX researchers).• Defining the product KPIs and ensuring that appropriate mechanisms are in place to monitor their performance.• Championing a strong product culture.• Identifying and evaluating new business opportunities.

Ta’ Xbiex, Mt

As the Product Director for new markets, I formed part of the management team responsible for launching operations in new markets to fuel business growth. Within this team, I was primarily responsible for the management of the products, tools, and platforms related to these markets (Africa and the US). My main responsibilities in this role included:• Conducting market and competitor research to identify key success factors and local preferences for the product.• Contributing to the development of business cases to evaluate the attractiveness of various markets where Betsson Group did not yet operate.• Evaluating whether to launch operations in new markets using our own technology or with third-party providers (or a mix).• Scoping and defining the launch plans for market entry. • Building up, coaching and managing the new product team responsible for this area.• Managing the product development roadmap for the markets falling under the team’s responsibility, including the assessment and prioritisation of any new features to be launched to these markets.• Managing relationships with all partners and third-party suppliers engaged for the markets falling under the team’s responsibility. • Identifying opportunities to continuously improve and optimise the product through research, data, and stakeholder feedback.• Assisting with the set up of local operational teams.

Ta’ Xbiex, Mt

As Director of Platform Product at Betsson Group, I was leading a team of product managers, product owners, delivery managers and content managers who were responsible for the product management and development of our sites and apps and backend and data platforms. My main duties in this role included:• Managing and leading the product team (team size: 40).• Working across the organisation to establish and maintain priorities for product development.• Defining product strategies for our sites, apps and backend platforms.• Establishing objectives and goals for product development.• Leading make or buy decisions and the evaluation of third-party products.• High level scoping for major initiatives, and resolving scope issues.• Conducting market and competitor analysis and analysing internal data to drive product development.• Ensuring an appropriate delivery organisation is in place to deliver major cross-functional initiatives.• Preparing reports and status updates for senior management.• Building effective working relationships with all stakeholders.

Ta’ Xbiex, Mt

As the Head of Product at Betsson Group, I was overall responsible for the product management and optimisation of the group’s sites and apps. I led a team (18 people) of product managers, product owners and content managers working in this area across all product verticals. As such, my responsibilities in this role were similar to those described above in my role as Product Director, but on a smaller scale.

Ta’ Xbiex, Mt

As a Senior Product Owner at Betsson, I was responsible for the development of a new mobile sportsbook product. My responsibilities included:• Managing and prioritising the product backlog• Defining user stories and acceptance criteria• Working closely with the development teams on the product development• Working with UX & UI gurus to deliver wireframes and designs, and to optimise the user experience, flows and interfaces• Identifying and building cases for new product features and improvements• Product optimisation and performance analysis• Market analysis and research

Ta’ Xbiex, Mt

As a Senior Project Manager at Betsson, I was responsible for delivering large and strategically important projects in the company. My typical duties when leading a project were as follows:• Managing and owning the entire project life-cycle from inception to post-launch support.• Acting as the interface between the Technology and Business teams.• Forming and leading cross-functional and geographically dispersed project teams.• Conducting business analysis and project scoping activities, including requirements elicitation and documentation, process modelling, and running gap analyses.• Developing project budgets, timeframes and plans for senior management approval.• Creating and maintaining all project management documentation.• Communicating project progress, risks and issues at all levels of the organisation.• Chairing project steering committees.Projects worked on include:• Migration of brands on to Betsson Group's proprietary gaming platforms.• Launching brands in to regulated markets.• A new front-end framework that works across products, brands and jurisdictions.• Launching new sportsbook and casino products.

London, Gb

As a senior executive, I would continue to manage projects as in my previous role, but was given additional responsibilities with this promotion as follows:- Team lead, with five project managers / business analysts as direct reports.- Recruitment and mentoring of new team members.- Responsible for overall project governance, programme management and product development.- Defining and documenting the delivery processes.- Contributing to the company’s Technology strategy.- Accountable for the team’s KPIs.- Overall programme management of various company programmes.- Providing yearly budgets (CAPEX + OPEX) for projects to be running that year that would be incorporated in to the overall budget.- Management of supplier relationships (from local companies to global ones such as Accenture).Some of the notable programmes and projects I worked on during this time include:- Programme management of the CRM & Billing transformation programme (to migrate to new CRM / Billing systems), as well as project managing the delivery of the first phases of the programme (including the transformation of the customer data model and migration of customer data).- Delivery of several improvements to vodafone.com.mt, including a re-design of the site and the introduction of more online self-service tools.- Upgrading the contact centre system and IVR.- Delivery of a solution to allow third-parties to integrate with Vodafone's top up system.- Assisting with the migration of the pre-paid billing system (managing the integration and re-design of the website to work with the new system).- Working with the sales team to deliver total telco services (international bandwidth, PABX, fibre, etc...) to corporate customers.Other notable achievements from this time include:- Achieving the highest scores in the Technology department from the internal people survey- Achieving record levels of output in terms of projects delivered

London, Gb

Forming part of Vodafone's Technology department, the Demand & Project Management team was the link between the Technology department and the rest of the organisation. The team was primarily responsible for the overall planning of projects to be delivered for the rest of the organisation, including the project management of such deliveries, defining the solutions to be delivered, and allocating resources to project (in terms of CAPEX, OPEX and human capital).As such, my main responsibilities included:- Working with other departments to develop 12 month project and product roadmaps for their areas. - Project management and planning of any projects assigned to me, from concept to launch.- Preparing and maintaining all project documentation, including project plans, specifications documents, logs and registers, status reports, etc...- Business and systems analysis, including gathering and documenting both functional and non-functional requirements.- Defining and documenting the solution architecture with various teams. This would typically include defining and documenting functional and technical specifications, product features, the customer experience, and outlining the technical architecture. For certain requests, this would also include an assessment of whether to build in-house or buy (outsource or procure a COTS solution).- Running RFPs and RFIs to collect information on various off-the-shelf solutions, and preparing and presenting the subsequent evaluations and recommendations to senior management.Notable projects worked on and successfully delivered during this time:- Outsourcing and delivery of the new vodafone.com.mt- New product platform for pre-paid bundles- A system for managing consumer contracts- Document management system- Solution for improving the sign up process for consumer contracts (lead time reduced from days to hours)- iPhone and BlackBerry launches- Launch of several campaigns/products for pre and post paid segments

Usa, Us

Alert eBusiness (now part of Deloitte Digital) was one of the most popular web development and design companies based in Malta. While at Alert, I worked as a software developer on a number of web sites, web applications (such as e-commerce applications), e-Government services, and intranet systems. During my time at Alert, I gained significant knowledge in software development and developed a high degree of competence in the following:• Software development using VB.NET, C#.NET, ASP.NET, JavaScript, Web Services, AJAX, XML, HTML, CSS and database technologies (SQL, Views, Stored Procedures).• Database Administration with SQL Server 2000 / 2005.• Server Administration with Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 / 7.0.• Content management systems (CMS).I would also eventually become the de facto development team lead within a few months of joining, with additional responsibilities:• Training and mentoring of new recruits to the development team.• Serving as the main contact point from the development team for assisting the sales team in collecting requirements and preparing proposals (including costing of work).• Documenting functional and technical specifications.• Assisting in the recruitment of new developers.• Quality assurance of deliverables of other team members.• Defining the development standards for the team.

Betklass was a small online gaming company which operated in the Italian market. I started working for Betklass on a part-time basis, before switching to full-time when I finished my student job at Anvil. For most of my time at Betklass, I was the sole IT person in the company. The job mainly involved software development for the web site and backend (using ASP, JavaScript, C#, HTML, CSS and SQL), database administration (MySQL), server administration (Windows Server 2003, IIS 6.0), and managing external suppliers. Notable achievements were launching an online casino (integrated with a third-party), enhancing the sportsbook offering (particularly for live betting), and automating tasks for the sportsbook traders.

I was employed by Anvil (later acquired by Ion Group) on a student contract where I worked on their Denarius product - which was an extremely complex financial trading system used by some of the world’s major banks, such as Barclays and JP Morgan. I was mainly involved in developing test scripts and bug fixing, using Perl, C++ and UNIX.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

Mba, E-Business

Bachelor Of Commerce (Hons), Management

Bachelor Of Science, Business And Computing