Brandon Hollembeak

Product Manager - Apartments.com at Classified Ventures

Location: Greater Chicago Area
Industry: Online Media

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Brandon Hollembeak's Overview

Current

Product Manager, Apartments.com at Classified Ventures

Past

Project Manager, Apartments.com at Classified Ventures
Co-Founder/CEO at Seats in Seats, LLC
IT Project Manager II at IBM Global Services

IT Project Manager at Sprint
Business Systems Analyst at Birch Telecom

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Education

Emporia State University
Cowley County Community College

Connections

294 connections

Websites

Company Website

I'm an ambitious entrepreneur, whether working inside of an existing company, on a startup, or consulting on other SMB's, questioning the status quo and legacy ideas and methods to disrupt the ordinary way of thinking and invent solutions of high value and low cost.

I focus primarily on identifying significant customer needs inside specific industries, and assist in designing solutions that are beneficial to both the creating organization and the customer.

I'm experienced with both Waterfall and Agile product development methodologies, but favor Agile utilizing Lean techniques for product innovation and optimization, focusing on specific, actionable metrics and short delivery cycles to maximize value and learn quickly.

Specialties

Entrepreneurship, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Project Management, Digital Marketing, and Customer Service and Operations Management.

Product Manager, Apartments.com

Classified Ventures

Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Internet industry

February 2009 – Present (3 years 1 month) Chicago, IL

Apartments.com is the leading national Internet Listing Service (ILS) for the multifamily rental industry, providing advertising solutions to owners, management companies and individual properties to find renters and lease apartments across the United States. The Apts.com family of sites also includes ApartmentHomeLiving.com and RentalHomesPlus.com.

Brandon manages the entire suite of B2B products for Apts.com, including innovation, customer testing, KPI/metrics definition reporting and product optimization through the Growth, Sustain and Sunset phases of the product lifecycle. He was also part of the Core Team of individuals responsible for the transformation of Apts.com to Agile business and development processes.

He manages a team of Associate Product Managers that act as the Product Owner of two Agile Product Teams for Apts.com: 1) The data and feature integrations with our industry partners, and 2) the tools & services provided to our customers to manage their advertising effectively.

He also assembled and manages the Business Process Team, comprised of key individuals critical to managing the customer lifecycle through the three phases of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Billing and Fulfillment, in order to make sure the optimal processes and systems are in place for maximum value and to accommodate innovation needs.

Project Manager, Apartments.com

Classified Ventures

Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Internet industry

October 2005 – February 2009 (3 years 5 months) Chicago, IL

Recommended appropriate scope for projects based on business priorities, and advised the business on options, risks and costs, owned project requirements from project initiation through implementation and maintenance, and managed to the annual resource pipeline to ensure each project scheduled in the budget was delivered.

Accountable for establishing the Apartments.com PMO, as well as its processes, documentation templates and repositories, time tracking and critical success factors, and trained each team in the organization on how to use such tools and methodologies in the most efficient and effective manner.

Accountable for establishing the vendor evaluation and selection RFP process for software purchases, including the evaluation of build vs. buy, document templates, contract negotiations and procurement, as well as negotiating consulting services utilized for implementation with development teams.

Co-Founder/CEO

Seats in Seats, LLC

October 2006 – December 2008 (2 years 3 months) Chicago, IL

SeatsInSeats.com provided access to its members to comp (free) tickets to select performances of Chicago Stage Theatre. An annual membership provided you access to the site, and SeatsInSeats worked with the individual theatres and companies to manage their comp tickets.

As Co-Founder/CEO, Brandon managed the business development and setup, the technology team, financial processes with the CPA, and operational systems and processes.

SeatsInSeats.com was live from 2006 to 2008, and ended business at the end of 2008 due to the impact of the economic climate on both the customer (theatre) and consumer needs, and changes in the senior leadership team.

IT Project Manager II

IBM Global Services

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; IBM; Information Technology and Services industry

November 2004 – March 2005 (5 months)

Responsible for managing technology projects from definition of requirements through Warranty phase after deployment. This includes coordinating the IT resources, satisfying Sarbanes-Oxley project audit requirements, and guiding the progress of the project according to scope, schedule and cost, reporting to the Project Business Sponsor.

IT Project Manager

Sprint

Public Company; 10,001+ employees; S; Telecommunications industry

October 2001 – November 2004 (3 years 2 months)

Recommend appropriate scope for projects based on business priorities, and advise the business on options, risks and costs, owning project requirements from project initiation through implementation and maintenance, while managing to the annual resource pipeline to ensure each project scheduled in the budget is delivered.

Helped establish the 10-member Application Support Team for Sprint PCS, defining its functions and processes and incorporating it into the Application Development organization, and lead software support transitions to the team.

Created a team consisting of end users and development team members to identify performance improvements for the Sprint PCS Call Center systems, creating a net savings of $18.5 Million in 2003, across 12,000 users world-wide, earning CIO and Customer Service VP recognition.

Business Systems Analyst

Birch Telecom

Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Telecommunications industry

February 1998 – September 2001 (3 years 8 months)

Coordinated the initial requirements gathering and documentation of project requests. This included gathering high-level business requirements, performing cost-benefit analysis and transitioning approved projects to the Project Manager. It also involved negotiating changes to the vendor billing system in use from an acquisition.

Trained as Co-Administrator of Siebel CRM system to manage the product selection and order workflow processes from Sales through the customer fulfillment cycle.

Performed development duties throughout the full software development lifecycle, focusing on the company billing systems. Major projects included developing new invoice software, creating the ability for hierarchical billing, and contract billing functionality.

Emporia State University

BSB, Computer Information Systems

1996 – 1998

Activities and Societies: Computer Information Systems Dept. Advisory Council, ESU Union Activities Council - Featured Events Chair

Cowley County Community College

AA, Accounting

1994 – 1996

Activities and Societies: Phi Theta Kappa, Symphonic Band, Jazz Band

Websites:

Company Website

Interests:

Entrepreneurship, Product Development, Business and Strategy Development, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Technologies, Consumer Electronics, snowboarding, jazz, blues, wine, culinary arts, stage theatre, performing arts

Groups and Associations:

Built in Chicago, Chicago Product Management Association, Influence Ecology, Board of Chicago's Redtwist Theatre

Honors and Awards: