Ali Akbar

House No. 32 A, Tech Society, Canal Road, Lahore. Mobile: (- Email:-www.linkedin.com/in/aliakbarbusapps ALI AKBAR SUMMARY Product/Project Manager with 15+ years of experience in Agile and Waterfall methodologies. Proven ability to drive product and project success through crossteam collaboration and strategic planning. KEY SKILLS Product Management, Project Management (PMI, Agile), Distribution & Retail, IT Services Management, Digital Transformation, ERP, Business Process Automation, Technology enabled Business Process Re-Engineering, Change Management TECHNICAL SKILLS PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE JIRA, Asana, Hubspot, Dot NET, Oracle Forms & Reports, Crystal Reports, CI/CD, E2E Testing, SQL, Oracle, MY SQL, SQL Server, MS Project, IBM Maximo, DB2, Pentaho ETL Product Manager, GA Universe (June 2023 – present) As a Product Manager, my core responsibility is to oversee the development and enhancement of our low code platform, GA Universe - the first Saudi initiative of its kind, focusing on strategic planning, feature development, and optimization. I'm committed to creating a seamless connection between developers and creators while optimizing our platform for scalable growth. Responsibilities: ▪ Product Strategy and Planning: Collaborate with the co-Founders and executive management to define product vision and strategy. ▪ Develop and maintain the product roadmap, ensuring alignment with business goals and market trends. Product Development: ▪ Lead the product development process from ideation to launch, working closely with crossfunctional teams including engineering, sales and marketing. ▪ Translate customer needs and market insights into detailed product requirements and use cases. ▪ Work closely with the engineering team to prioritize and manage the product backlog. Product Launch and Marketing: ▪ Plan and execute successful product launches, including defining go-to-market strategies and supporting marketing collateral. ▪ Collaborate with the marketing team to develop product positioning, messaging, and sales enablement resources. Product Performance Tracking and Improvement: ▪ Monitor and analyze product performance metrics, customer feedback, and market trends to identify opportunities for improvement and optimization. ▪ Work closely with the customer success team to gather user feedback and prioritize product enhancements. Manager Business Applications: Burque Corporation Pvt Ltd (May 2017- June 2023) Responsibilities: • Act as business integration point for IT Service Delivery, SLA agreement, major Service Incident Management and Change Management for assigned portfolios. • Managed and lead technical team to deliver new solutions, maintain systems and provide system support against agreed service levels. • Lead a portfolio of multiple projects, managing resourcing, time-lines, budgets, and quality of deliverables in conjunction with IT team. • Build industry relationships to stay abreast with latest developments, innovation and business direction. • Ensure compliance with IT Policies, Security Standards and strengthen internal controls. Identify and manage key risks in business. • Advice business to identify opportunities to improve/grow/expand their businesses and the maturity of operating models. Projects: Managed the application portfolio of SPAR Pakistan (an international retail store chain and a subsidiary of Burque Group), a $10 million project including implementation SAP B1 and iVend. Currently facilitating the implementation of SAP S/4 HANA, leading in HCM, SD & DSD, project costing over $10 million. Implemented the Centralized Attendance Management System in Burque Corporation across the network of 40 branches in Pakistan. Managed the implementation of ERP at Burque East Africa in Tanzania with enablement of sales automation, enabling centralized reporting with Burque Head office. Lead the digital Route to Market initiatives of BCL, including Geo tagging and route optimization of over 100,000 outlets. Spearheaded the implementation of Sales Automation System for over 800 users across 30 cities of Pakistan in under 6 months. Manage the roll out of Retailer app for over 36,000 retailers across Pakistan, enabling them to order over 500 household goods. Conceptualized and liaised the development and implementation of first ever delivery application in FMCG sector with a fleet size of 500 vehicles. Assistant Manager Business Applications: Dollar Industries Ltd (May 2013 – May 2017) Responsibilities: • Managed Service Level Agreements and SLA Management & Reporting Framework for all IT applications services. • Identified & escalated technical & business risks and prepare contingency plan. • Proactively reported & tracked with reporting manager on Governance, Risk & compliance related issues till satisfactory resolution. Page 2 • • Monitored and reported service availability for each application services against service level Agreements. Prepared & tested DR plans for each application services to ensure business continuity Projects: As Project Leader, successfully managed analysis, design, development, standardization & implementation of Distribution Management System for 25 distribution in over 20 cities. Implementation of the following Business Applications: • Enterprise Asset Management IBM Maximo • Human Capital management • Sugar CRM Project Coordinator: Dollar Industries Ltd (January 2008 – April 2013) Responsibilities: • Took ownership of designated Business Applications initiatives & operations Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define, design new features. • Unit-test as well as field testing for robustness, work on bug fixing, analyzing and fixing memory leaks and improving application performance. • Client communication for features explanation and for feedback and continuous support • Design and develop applications in accordance with requirements. About Project / Product: As Team Lead, successfully managed analysis, design, development, standardization & implementation of Planning & Budgeting System for the organization bringing efficiency, transparency, control & systematic reporting & monitoring of CAPEX & OPEX budgets. Developed and customized the Secondary Sales Management System. Customization of Open Source CRM Sugar. Development of Tax Management System Software Developer: Associated Consulting Group (January 2007 – January 2008) Responsibilities: • Worked as .Net Developer and Backend Developer in different projects. Page 3 ACHIEVEMENTS & PARTICIPATIONS • • • • • • EDUCATION Nominated in Leadership Advantage Program for Future Leaders (Burque) Best Performer of the year 2019 (Burque) Big Data Hadoop Developer Training - 2016 Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Microsoft Office Project 2007 Managing Projects Specialization in Visual Basic .Net Diploma in Information Technology in 2002 VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY OF PAKISTAN MASTERS IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, FINANCE,-. BACHELOR IN SCIENCES, COMPUTER SCIENCES, 2002 – 2007. Page 4