Ramon Kolb

Current

Sr. Product Manager, Mobile Planning at Nuance Communications, Inc.

Past

Senior Product Manager, Mobile Planning at VoiceSignal
Senior Product Manager at Voice Signal Technologies
Senior Technical Sales Manager at SavaJe Technologies, Inc.

Owner at Euro Fashion (Sole Proprietorship)
Manager Technical Sales and Marketing at Comverse
Product Manager, Mobile Telematics at Comverse
Senior Systems Engineer, Japan Business Unit at Comverse
Project Engineer/Manager, Cabling and Electrical Tests at Siemens AG, Nicaragua Office

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Education

Boston University
Fontys Hogescholen
Bernardinuscollege

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Recommended

4 people have recommended Ramon

Connections

417 connections

Industry

Wireless

Ramon Kolb’s Summary

A telecommunications professional with many years of experience driving value-added products, solutions, and deliveries to mobile handset manufacturers and mobile operators. Proven track record in relationship management, product negotiation, and deliverable management that resulted in realization of multi-million dollars of revenue and sales/uptake of new products by new and existing customers.

Ample experience in the telecommunications industry, both on the network side (large footprint, operator premises based products) and on the device side (small footprint, embedded products).

Skills include:
- driving design wins with mobile handset manufacturers and carriers
- development of product strategy and positioning
- business development
- roadmap development
- program management
- product delivery management for extremely complex products with multiple interdependent partnerships
- partnership management for joint deliveries to major customers
- technical sales and marketing to major and minor international network operators
- UI, UE, and telephony (voice) interface design for handset and network based products
- product/program management for large scale (multi-million-$) projects for demanding customers
- technically savvy in mobile and landline network technology and topology
- deep technical understanding of low footprint (mobile device) requirements
- able to define and implement technical solutions for business problems
- multi lingual and internationally oriented: English, Spanish, Dutch, German, French

Dual Citizen of the US and the Netherlands. Based near Boston, MA.

Ramon Kolb’s Specialties:

Business Development, Product Management, Program Management, Technical Sales, Systems Engineering, Project Management, Requirements Definition, UI Design, Product Positioning, Building Customer Relationships

Ramon Kolb’s Experience

Sr. Product Manager, Mobile Planning

Nuance Communications, Inc.

(Public Company; NUAN; Computer Software industry)

August 2005 — Present (4 years 4 months)

Managed team of PMs driving product deployment to our OEM customers, interfacing between customers, sales, core product management, and integration engineering on a director/executive level.

Sales related functions and results:
- Business development / pre-sales
- Product and deal pricing
- Deal review for product coverage and rev. rec., and features / concessions
- SOW review for clear definition of project scope, deliverables, and payments
- Maintaining and expanding relationships with top tier mobile handset manufacturers and carriers

Product Management related functions and results:
- Technical and Market Oriented Product and Program Management
- Driving product direction
- Product integration pipeline management
- Scope and schedule change management
- Deliverable management
- Extensively contributions to effort to reach VSOE for mobile products

Direct results include speech software deployments on more than 250M phones and contracts with OEMs resulting more than $100M in revenue.
Senior Product Manager, Mobile Planning

VoiceSignal

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Wireless industry)

August 2005 — August 2007 (2 years 1 month)

In August 2007, VoiceSignal was acquired by Nuance Communications, Inc. Please see there for a description of my position.
Senior Product Manager

Voice Signal Technologies

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Wireless industry)

August 2005 — August 2007 (2 years 1 month)

This entry is to catch people using the alternate spelling of VoiceSignal. For a complete description of this position see "VoiceSignal" above.
Senior Technical Sales Manager

SavaJe Technologies, Inc.

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Wireless industry)

August 2004 — August 2005 (1 year 1 month)

Sales Manager and Senior Technical Sales Engineer for the Americas.

- Identify and build contacts with mobile network operators in the Americas.
- Present a Java-based operating system for mobile phones to mobile network operators.
- Manage their expectations.
- Visit professional conferences and forums.
- Communicate product requirements of operators to the Product Management team.
- Closely cooperate with Engineering and provide direction and feedback. Research markets and potential customers.
Owner
Euro Fashion (Sole Proprietorship)

(Sole Proprietorship; 1-10 employees; Retail industry)

May 2003 — December 2004 (1 year 8 months)

Small Business Owner and Entrepreneur
Euro Fashion, Boston, MA, USA (Copley/Prudential Mall; Chestnut Hill Mall)

- Founded, operated and expanded jewelry and fashion accessory import and retail business
- Hired and managed up to 6 employees
Manager Technical Sales and Marketing

Comverse

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; CMVT; Telecommunications industry)

May 2002 — May 2003 (1 year 1 month)

- Developed value chains and commercial and technical positioning of the company’s M2M offering. This involved frequent contacts with large European GSM operators such as Orange and Vodafone.
- Closely cooperated with R&D in a pivotal role with overall product delivery responsibility in terms of contents, quality, and timeliness.
- Developed and presented operator business cases for M2M offering
- Frequently met, screened, and qualified partners as part of M2M Business Development effort
- Developed and executed sales strategy for product
- Co-wrote business plan for corporate spin-off effort
- Explained and defended product and sales strategy to major Venture Capital firms as part of a spin-off effort
- Frequently presented and attended at customer and partner meetings in Europe
Product Manager, Mobile Telematics

Comverse

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; CMVT; Telecommunications industry)

March 2001 — May 2002 (1 year 3 months)

- Drove product direction and led technical and strategic requirements definition effort of Comverse’s Mobile Telematics offering.
- Developed value chains and commercial positioning of the product. This involved frequent contacts with European GSM operators.
- Speaker at professional conferences.
- Closely cooperated with R&D to guide the development efforts of Comverse’s telematics products to match the company’s vision of its involvement in the Machine to Machine market.
Senior Systems Engineer, Japan Business Unit

Comverse

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; CMVT; Telecommunications industry)

June 1997 — March 2001 (3 years 10 months)

- Conducted regular meetings with Japanese customers (in the US and in Japan) to discuss and negotiate product requirements.
- Co-wrote technical proposals for various projects for customers in Japan.
- Wrote detailed technical product requirements for R&D as implementation guidelines and for the customer to verify functional compliance. This included System, Application, OMAP, and External Interface (E1/R2, ISDN, SS7, SMPP, Internet, etc.) Specifications.
- Calculated and verified voicemail system capacity and performance using complex models.
- Taught training classes to R&D Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.
Project Engineer/Manager, Cabling and Electrical Tests

Siemens AG, Nicaragua Office

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SI; Telecommunications industry)

September 1994 — August 1995 (1 year )

•Supervised, planned, designed, and administrated the installation of a cabling network for the Nicaraguan national local/long-distance telephone company TELCOR (now ENETEL).

Ramon Kolb’s Education

Boston University

MSEE , Electrical Engineering , 1995 — 1997

Activities and Societies:

Teaching Assistantship, Research Assistantship. IEEE member. GPA 3.46/4.0 Specialization: digital signal processing and telecommunications
Fontys Hogescholen

BSEE , Electrical Engineering , 1990 — 1994

University name was "Hogeschool Eindhoven". Degree is BSEE with concentration in Telecommunications and Digital Signal Processing
Bernardinuscollege

VWO , Gymnasium-B , 1981 — 1988

Additional Information

Ramon Kolb’s Interests:

Android, iPhone, Twitter, Social Media, Mobile Software, LBS, Location, Voice Recognition, Mobile, Mobile Telephony, Marketing, Product Management, Business Development, mobile telephony market development, photography, ham radio (KX1T / PA3EUG), amateur radio, micro-financing, kiva.org, kiva