Vitomir Rašić
Creative and capable IT product manager - B2B SaaS
About Me
I pride myself on being a kind, patient and positive man and not a jerk.
I pursue passions, not paychecks, although, in a recent survey, my wife and three kids strongly disagree with this statement, advising me that paychecks are also important.
I am a competent, creative and diverse IT product manager with hands-on experience building new SaaS products from an idea to a market launch.
I am a bridge between a big, ambitious dream and reality. Dream ---> Vita -----> Reality
I am an active parent, using my creativity and skills to train the next generations of creators. I share my experience and learn something new every day. Committed student of life.
Interested in epic fantasy and knights' code of conduct, I live my life with contagious optimism and belief in karma and that good comes back to the ones who deliver it. Love DnD, Diving, sports, and nature.
Hi, thank you for reaching out
Here are couple more things you should know about me:
I drive results and quality. I am outcome-driven.
I work closely with customers to understand their pains/needs and produce value for them and their businesses leveraging the appropriate product management methodologies.
In my 15 years of an active career in IT, I wore many hats, starting my professional journey as support, which evolved to sales, marketing, innovation, product development, and product management. With that, I had the luck to experience all-important business roles from their perspectives, working with some fantastic people, and giving me a 360-degree view of business, and how to create and improve anything.
This blend of roles gave me a unique all-around vision and perspective on how to bring ideas to market successfully.
What can I do? Where can I contribute?
> Agile methodologies
Think of me as a Swiss Army knife. Whether it’s Scrum or the nuanced dance of Kanban, I’m all about flexing to fit the task at hand. Scrum and Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) sit at the top of my list, though.
> Strong Strategic thinker
Dreaming up the future of products gets me out of bed in the morning. Crafting product strategies, visions and roadmaps, and zeroing in on that elusive market fit are the puzzles I live to solve.
> Strong in UI/UX design
General principles of a good UX, and hands-on design skills for producing mockups, wireframes, and prototypes.
> Strong in Team Leadership and coordinating efforts toward common objectives.
> Strong in Product Execution, and commercialization
From Strategy to Roadmap initiatives split into epic and user stories with clear priorities.
> Communication is my forte
I believe in keeping everyone from stakeholders to team members in the loop, ensuring we’re all rowing in the same direction.
> Strong in shipping, pricing models and Go To Market
> Strong in creating language market fit, describing value to customers
> Personally evolving daily
Transparent, honest, and diligent team player, with a fierce defending stance towards product goals, my team, and vision.
Flexible enough to recognize risks, and acknowledge failures, always learning how to improve.
A lifelong learner with a passion for knowledge and keeping my creative spark bright
and whatever I learned and did in the meantime you read this. :)
I learn quickly and can integrate into any team and take over my responsibilities with utmost efficiency.
Worked in the following industries:
- Innovation management SaaS
- ISO management SaaS
- Gaming
- HPC and collaboration- NGS and Bioinformatics
- Translation management, localization
Projects:
- DataScience platform (Web+on-premise)
- From idea to product platform (Web)
- ISO management platform (Web)
- AI precision medicine e-medication
- Bitcoin mining with surplus renewable energy
- Gambling games
- Virtual soccer games
- Recruiting platformBe the change you want to see in the world.
My Motto
Current position
Building cool stuff for:
Phrase
Product Manager
Aug 2022 – Present
Phrase is a translation management software tool that helps businesses translate and adapt their content for different languages and regions. It provides a cloud-based platform that streamlines the translation process by enabling teams to collaborate on translations, manage translation workflows, and reuse translations across projects.
Currently helping Phrase Strings team to deliver a spot on software localization experience to our customers.
Experience
Stuff I did to build and improve products, and myself
Maxeler Technologies
Head of Product
Oct 2020 – Aug 2022
Maxeler Technologies is a leading provider of dataflow computing platforms, solutions, and appliances. Their products and services are currently deployed across Finance (exchanges, banking, and trading), networking, as well as high-performance computing domains in defense, government, and media. In 2022, Maxeler is acquired by Groq - US based AI chip manufacturing and development company.
As Head of Product, I was appointed as the leader of the teams working on M-Space - collaboration platform for tech and non-tech, in order to:
- Define Strategy and product Vision with the CIO of the company and founder of the product
- Formulate business model based on data and facts coming from the Market research and User interviews
- Design Customer Journeys and User flows
- Bring the product to market, define positioning and design approach to customers
- Improve platform design and UX
- Promote agile software development and improve existing practices to deliver projects quicker to the market
- Create, assess and maintain healthy product backlogs, daily scrums, sprint planning, review and retrospectives to ensure efficient delivery
- Write and maintain essential product documentation
- Bridge all obstacles to ensure steady development across multiple teams and on projects with many dependencies affecting the timeline
- Cooperating with a number of teams in different countries
I worked on a variety of colorful and interesting products:
- Recruiting industry - developing programmer interview and test platform
- Data Science - developing a platform to manage data lifecycle, produce data visualizations, and train models
- Medical AI - develop a disease treatment success prediction system using AI and Machine learning
- Bitcoin mining data and mining operations control dashboard
- Bitcoin mining device product preparation for commercialization
- NGS bioinformatics solution for rare and common cancers
Reasons to leave:
- Inability to work in wider product team (one-man-army)
- Year to year contract
- Investments in SaaS solution stopped
Logispin group
Feb 2018 - Oct 2020 (2 years, 9 months)
Position: Senior Product Owner | SaaS | B2C | Gaming |
Created in 2009 Logispin provides bespoke software development and consultancy specialized in the development of products for the online gaming industry.
Logispin offers first-class sportsbook modules with the combination of high-quality, next generation in-house products and 3rd party content: Soft Games, Casino Games, Poker, Bingo, Live Casino and Multiplayer Games;
With that, Logispin also has a wide range of back office modules including Payment Systems, Fraud Management, Trading Console, Data Warehouse, Reporting and Statistics, CRM and Marketing Tools, API and Integration with 3rd-Party Software, Auditing and Security.
As Project coordinator, I was appointed as the leader of the Sport Games, Games and Integrations teams, consisting of 35 members and a portfolio of 40+ projects in a different phase of development, in order to:
- Promote agile software development and improve existing practices to deliver projects quicker to the market
- Work closely with product owners and different stakeholders to identify and than deliver the right improvements and new products to markets across the globe
- Create, assess and maintain healthy product backlogs, daily scrums, sprint planning, review and retrospectives to ensure efficient delivery
- Write and maintain essential product documentation
- Deliver helpful weekly, monthly and quarterly reports to the stakeholders
- Bridge all obstacles to ensure steady development across multiple teams and on projects with many dependencies affecting the timeline
- Identify new processes, products and ideas for company wide development, coordination and delivery improvements
- Cooperating with a number of teams in different countries
Reasons to leave:
- Burnout
- Slow salary progress
- Little strategic work, mostly execution with devs
Conformio
Nov 2016 – Jan 2018
Conformio Director at Advisera Expert Solutions Ltd
Advisera Expert Solutions Ltd is a company with high expertise in ISO standards and digital service. One of the 4 key product lines is Conformio - an online ISO management platform with modules for project, task, document and communication management.
As Conformio director, my role has two main aspects:
Product development manager
The first aspect, as the product development manager my job is to bring Conformio platform to a commercially viable product. The main focus of this role is internal. My assignment is to form a plan and set of procedures for all product development activities that will maximize the effects of the current development resources. I should coordinate and manage all development activities to meet the predefined Development Roadmap, deadlines and priorities.As a product development manager, I managed to:
- Shape the overall strategy for product development
- Setup and implement Agile product development and manage healthy product life cycle
- Lead 2 development teams remotely and ensure the deadlines are respected
- Create requirements specification for technical maintenance and development team
- Check, validate and verify the quality of the made improvements
- Optimize and reduce costs of the server-side infrastructure and deploy cost-efficient concept to scale
- Resolve all issues, bugs, and inconsistencies in the platform
- Develop technical documentation: backup & recovery procedure, functional specification, handling downtime, security statements, integration and user manual documentation.
- Develop attractive and professional content for in-app notifications, result messages, emails.
- Build and maintain online Help center with 135 step-by-step articles on 5 different languages
- Work with design teams to develop intuitive UX and to present complex functions in a simple and easy to understand interface to enable smooth user journey and excellent customer experience
- Develop tutorials and supporting features to introduce users to main platform components and ensure retention
- Conformio product manager
The second aspect, as the Conformio director, my role is to act as the proactive product manager. This role has a strong external focus towards the market. That refers to continuous optimization of the platform itself by identifying gaps in the company offering and proposing new viable ideas to bridge them. Coordination with marketing and sales directors on the Conformio platform market positioning helping them understand the product positioning, key benefits, and target customer. This includes co-development of the marketing & business expansion strategies and keeping a close ear to the voice of customers and competition tracking for direction.
Other activities tied to my role as the director would be:- Collaborate with sales, marketing, and other departments to devise and implement Go-To-Market strategy
- Create Lead nurturing emails and sign off content
- Coordinate and monitor development of all supporting materials such as Quick tour, References, Features, Data sheets, Demo scenarios, RFI
- Feel the pulse of customers, identify and develop the stuff that really matters
- Suggest, implement and track key performance parameters of the SaaS platform
- Identify key reasons for user churn and resolve them to ensure longterm user engagement
- Presents key results and findings to stakeholders
- Analyzes current and emerging best practices in the industry to ensure the products remain innovative
- Formulate budget plans and expenditures tied to the Conformio expansion activities
- Identify business development potential, plan and partner targets
- Copywriting, microblogging, and blogging (Advisera author)
- Representing Conformio on events
All in all, my role is to have an excellent communication with all cross-functional teams of Advisera, identify what we need to do to maximize our product offering and implement that to benefit the company.
Reasons to leave:
- Burnout
- Contract based agreement
Datastation Innovation Cloud
Nov 2010 - Nov 2016 (6 years)
Senior Product and Innovation manager
DataStation is a software company from Belgium with a strong focus on innovation management (idea, project and product management solutions).
In this vibrant startup, I was first hired as a customer support officer. As it was a small team of 10 employees and the majority of them were software engineers, my role quickly evolved from support, through product development management, sales, and marketing to product and innovation manager.My job as a product and innovation manager was to feel the pulse of the customers and propose and implement relevant improvement ideas, features, and modules for our huge innovation management software platform.
My job was to present the service to clients on the online demonstration sessions, assess their requirements and translate them to our software platform.My job was to implement our solutions and make sure they produce the desired result. I was an ever-present bridge between our clients and our development teams.
- My responsibilities:
- Managed product development activities for the online software platform.
- Managed implementation of innovation management methodologies to Innogenetics/Fujirebio, Anheuser-Bush InBev, Vanreusel Snacks, AMOT, Goodman Fielder, Alliance Laundry Systems, Paul Wurth, Royal Holloway University, HVMG, etc.
- Managed the implementation of the software service on 2 Tempus projects and 1 Erasmus + (7 different Universities).
- Providing technical and all-around support for DataStation global clients.
- In charge of DataStation screen share demo and training presentations and webinars.
- Managing www.innovation-post.com publication site for DataStation.
- Providing proper documentation related to business development and internal development procedures.
- Research and development of partnership networks and establishing sales channels.
- Branding, Marketing, and promotion strategy analysis, implementation and management.
- Maintaining the finest quality Social networks company image and reputation.
- Copywriting all company’s PR documentation and software support documentation: manuals, release sheets, newsletters, test procedures, maintenance announcements, public announcements, labels, software outbound messages, and notifications.
- Leading competition tracking initiative.
Reasons to leave:
- No connection between development and customer feedback
- Slow salary progress
- Bad vibe with CTO [totally personal]
Skills
Honed and developed through practical experience
Product development
*****
IT Service management
*****
IT Product management
*****
Agile product development
*****
Scrum
*****
Roadmaping
*****
Project Management
*****
Team Leadership
*****
Prioritisation
*****
Market Research
*****
User Research
*****
Competitive Analysis
*****
Product Discovery
*****
Strategy and Planning
*****
Business model design
*****
Product Positioning
*****
Product Innovation
*****
Product Commercialisation
*****
GTM Strategy
****
IT product marketing
****
Pricing and Sales Strategy
****
IT product demonstration
*****
IT product implementation
*****
IT product testing
*****
UI/UX Design
*****
HTML
***
Data Analysis
*****
Open Source
****
SEO
*****
Continous Development
*****
Recommendations
The word around town
Aleksandar Jovanović
Solutions Architect at TransPerfect
Vitomir brings a unique mentality to the team. His persistence, motivation and commitment to finding the best approach to a given situation is unmatched. His ability to lead is visible at first glance - he is always there to help, always ready to share the knowledge and support others in their professional development relying on his significant work experience and is always one step ahead, considering future steps and future improvements. That ability to envision future solutions, share that vision amongst the team and generate necessary support and motivation for executing it is something that surprised me consistently while we worked together. My professional advancement took a U-turn in the most positive of ways during the period we worked together and it was mainly due to Vitomir's guidance and support. Every organization looking to act proactively, to boost their innovation capacity and have a proper champion for their most challenging campaigns should look no further. Vita is your guy.
Thanks for everything Vitomir!Fedja Hvastija
Product Manager at Corsair
I've seen Vitomir manage the development of a project / document / collaboration SaaS tool with a tiny fraction of the resources required to perform such a feat. The continued development, updates, improvements, and his structured collection of inputs and feedback from internal users resulted in a solution that served as a viable backbone of all company operations - and kept getting better with each of the frequent version releases.
Vitomir has a keen eye for user experience and the ability to organize complex IT development around ruthlessly frequent priority changes and user inputs. Those skills aside, I was most impressed by his ability to combine the opinions of a broad spectrum of users and translate those into accurately forecasted and impeccably prioritized development plans.
Vitomir was an absolute joy to work with and I can't wait to see what he can do with a large budget and team someday soon.Laura Tettamanti
Head of Retention (CRM | Data | Martech | Content)
I worked with Vitomir on a number of projects at Logispin Group. Vitomir is competent, hyper responsive, open minded and very pleasant to work with. He has that "can do" attitude that nothing can shake and he's always looking to identify the problems correctly in order to find the best solution. Creative and innovative, but at the same time organized, Vitomir has left his mark in every project he touched. And he's a delightful person all around. I'm very glad to have worked with him and would recommend him without a doubt.
Milutin Pavićević
Delivery Manager at Levi9 Technology Services
Vitomir gives whole new meaning to creativity and innovation. If innovation could be more innovative, he would do it. Never ever start brainstorming session without him and tasks you assign to him, you can forget they ever existed. Issues in his vocabulary are fun challenges that give meaning to his day. Put him on the team and see it shine. You can rely on him both, professionally and personally and knowing him is definitely value in this life. Always positive and optimistic.... actually now that I think about it, I envy him :) The person you can work with, drink with and learn from!
Marija Jurun
Business Analyst and Project manager at lilcodelab
I have worked with Vitomir for almost a year when I was introduced as his assistant in developing Conformio Compliance & Company Management tool. I directly reported to him, with every task I got. From the beginning, Vitomir showed himself an excellent mentor, experienced manager and of course a good person in general. He was my mentor from the day one and I am very thankful for everything he taught me. He is very professional and has a friendly approach. Every obstacle, he came across, he managed really well and accomplished great results. I can definitely recommend him to any organization because his professionalism and ability to face new business challenges are exquisite.
Aleksandar Božović
Inrule - Helping companies in EMEA
I had a pleasure to work with Vitomir for more than a year. Vitomir is proactive, result oriented, responsible and technically sound employee and he is always ready to put all his energy and time to get the job done. He is a true leader and futuristic person, who always looks for modern and practical solutions. He managed to raise Conformio on whole another level, not just from the technical side, but as well from commercial and user side. His solutions are always 360 degrees oriented and I am sure that Vitomir will bring completely new perspective to any business and team.
Nikola Ratkovic
Product manager at Basiq
Vitomir was a great professional to work with. We worked together at Logispin and he helped me a lot to get started and also to understand internal processes. His work ethics is immaculate and so easy to work together with. He has the ability to work on multiple tasks and still be focused and deliver quality work. He goes out of his way when you ask for some help and guidance. Thanks a lot, Vitomir! You made the transition relatively smooth for me and was very helpful.
Dejan Martinčević
Technology Director at Info3 d.o.o.
Vitomir is a great project manager with excellent sense of balance between motivating and encouraging the developers and executing the top goals of CEO/Project owner. He has deadlines constantly under the control and manages to deliver even under extreme conditions and in unexpected situations. It was a pleasure working with him.
Giovanni Basta
Senior Project Manager at GIMO Global Interactive Marketing Online Ltd
I had the pleasure to work with Vitomir for a year and a half, and we managed several integrations and successfully closed several projects. Vitomir has been a key figure on managing different teams within Logipin, showing excellent skills for details, deadlines and business scopes. Reliable and diligent, he would be an asset for any organization looking for a talented PM.
Zdenek Llosa
Senior Sales Manager at Endorphina - Italy, Spain and LatAm
I started a couple of years ago in the iGaming Industry and working with Vitomir was not only satisfying in terms of project management but rewarding with the vast of technical knowledge He has acquired in the past years. Together we managed the launch of our product under their network of operations and I can only be grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him and learned a lot from him too!
Brian Perkins
Head Of Sales, Marketing & Digital Transformation, Europe & Middle East at Anheuser-Busch InBev
Vitomir is the ideal service partner. He is exceptionally efficient, responsive and punctual - always going the extra mile to accommodate last minute changes and challenges. In addition, Vitomir is not content with simply 'answering the brief' - he constantly comes up with ways to improve a given process or service. In other words, he drives quality and change, whether you ask for it or not. Finally, Vitomir is a good guy and a pleasure to work with on a personal level. I would recommend him and his company's services unequivocally. Great value, great integrity, great attitude.
Marko Cvetkovski
Assortment Manager at Forma Ideale d.o.o
I have always been fascinated with Vitomir's speed and innovative thinking. Vitomir is constantly dedicated to find best solutions, focus on results and to respect the agreement. His enviable intellectual capability, open mind, positive approach and enthusiasm are the features that distinguish him.
He is ready for short-time action, but also highly capable for profound long - term planning. One of his greatest characteristic is pragmatism.
I truly believe Vitomir is valuable member for any team or company and he will certainly do the best to achieve positive outcomes. He will give a sense of quality to any task that he undertakes.
He is a great manager and it is real pleasure to do business and have that person next to you since his qualities make him definitely worth it.Tomislav Jurun
Consultant for development and maintenance of online training at Advisera
I have worked with Vitomir for more than a year when he came to our company. Even though he was appointed as a director right away and had very little time to adjust, he showed remarkable ability to learn new stuff and he soon managed to lead the project on his own. I would definitely recommend Vitomir for any job because he's shown, on many occasions, that he is able to adapt and bring new ideas to the table. He did all that without losing his friendly approach to anyone and he was always more than ready to help regarding anything you've needed.
Silvio Cizmak
Web development professional - CTO at Motus media
Vitomir is a colleague that you want to have on your team, especially in complex projects like Conformio. He leads SaaS development with high professionalism and positive attitude in high-pressure situations, always highly cooperative and helping everyone in each segment of a project. He is well organized, honest, a hardworking leader that contributes to new ideas on each brainstorming session. When you stuck in project Vitomir is one of the first choices to ask for help. Working with Vitomir has been a privilege and an honor, and I would recommend him to anyone without reservation.
Ivana Zubcic
Problem-solving, project management and organization, administration, HR Self Employed (Finance and Operations)
It was a great pleasure working with Vitomir. He is highly reliable, diligent, considerate and meticulous. He is a good team player, displaying highest regards to both his team members and stakeholders. He continuously contributed excellent ideas which we gladly shaped into our strategy and business development plans. He respects deadlines, he is well organized and if you gave him a task, you can freely forget about it, cause it will be delivered. He is creative, hardworking and resourceful, and any employer or a team he is working with will get a great asset and value. I would work with Vitomir again anytime.
Strahinja Stojanović
ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001 Expert at Advisera.com
Vitomir was always highly cooperative and helping everyone finish the tasks on time. He was very committed to any project he was assigned and always putting the extra effort to finish the projects timely and in the best way. It was a great pleasure and honor to work with him.
Ivan Milanković
Head of Engineering, Serbia office at Maxeler Technologies, a Groq company
Vitomir has a capability to understand engineers and to help them with his advises and workarounds and also to support them with his motivational talks. He also has a great organizational skills. He is curious and likes to learn about new technologies and always works on improving himself and people around him. It was a great pleasure to work with Vitomir and any organization is lucky to have him!
Thank you for the great time and I hope that we will work together in the future again!
David Atlan
Owner, PhenoSystems
I had the pleasure to work with Vitomir for a public tender PCP offer. He is a very dedicated energetic person, capable of very quickly learning about totally new fields, such as genomics and personalised medicine which we tackled in our offer. He was a cornerstone during the writing of our initial tender, which certainly was successful in great parts thanks to his leadership, fast understanding competence and commitment. His interpersonal skill helped motivate the team during this tender and made working a pleasure.
I wish him all the best in his career and hope we can collaborate in the future.
Certifications
Where my geekyness flourished
Agile Software Development: Remote Teams
Building and Managing Signature Products
Becoming an AI-First Product Leader
Product Management: Building a Product Strategy
How to Use Data Visualization to Make Better Decisions—Faster
Agile Project Leadership
Developing a Learning Mindset
Defeating Unconscious Bias
Product Management First Steps
GDPR and Data Protection
Basic Information Security
Innovation management
Paper copy
Tools I use or used
Things I've picked up over the years to produce and manage products.
Jira
*****
GitLab
*****
Slack
*****
Adobe XD
****
Miro
*****
Photoshop
****
Illustrator
****
Lucidchart
*****
InVision
****
Grafana
****
Hubspot
****
Mailchimp
*****
Pixlr
*****
Asana
*****
Trello
*****
G Workspace
*****
AdWords
*****
Analytics
*****
Education
University of Belgrade
Master, Political science (2002-2010)
Second Grammar School 1998-2002
Languages
- English – Full professional proficiency
- Serbian - Native
- French – Elementary proficiency
Download Resume
Get a copy of my resume. Or contact me for more info.
LET'S CHAT
CONTACT ME!
Let's explore possibilities...
Copyright Vitomir Rašić - 2024