Lochana Panapitiya

An accomplished Program and Product Manager with over ten years of experience leading and supporting the design, delivery and execution of products and programs utilizing advanced data analytics, logistics and operations, marketing strategies, and client services. Well-versed in delivering results with a focus on marketing data analytics and marketing technology software tools. Technical skills and experience include data platform analytics and applications, product design and development, program evaluation and effectiveness as well as stakeholder management and process improvement.

• Business Analytics and Operations Consultant, Splash Fabric, Part-Time, Seattle, WA, 12/2023, present, Managed day to day inventory planning and sales operations, responded to customer inquiries, managed vendor relationships and product launches., Streamlined business operations by analyzing inventory data and top product sales to reduce the number of product skus held from 142 to 78. This allowed us to focus on replenishing top selling products and resulted in higher inventory turnover., Conducted customer data analytics to segment and better understand customers and used data insights to develop criteria for a customer loyalty program., Partnered with the Email Marketing Manager to analyze click-through data and bounce rates to make sure marketing campaigns fit the newly defined loyalty customer segments.
• Planned Career Break, Self-Employed, Part-Time, Seattle, WA, 05/2023, 11/2023, Took time off to focus on personal goals, set up a coaching framework to help small businesses succeed with their operations and product launches as well as attended continuing education courses., Attended a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat and volunteered at a subsequent 10-day silent Vipassana retreat as well as attended multiple yoga retreats to get more intouch with my inner self and strengthen my mental health., Attended online courses focusing on E-Commerce, Social Media Marketing and Business Development methodologies., Taught yoga as an independent contractor.
• Product Manager II, Nordstrom, Seattle, WA, 09/2021, 05/2023, Led the development of tools and practices to provide critical marketing data to stakeholders., Managed the Profile Attribute Service (PAS), a data service managing customer data from direct customer touchpoints on the web and mobile applications; gathered requirements around attributes directly input from the customer and output from data aggregations and models., Managed the Customer Attribute Library (CAL), a data analytics repository with ongoing data management and maintenance; developed the data acquisition and upload process, gathered requirements, and aligned use case definitions across stakeholders., Designed and launched the Audience Management Platform, a new data service platform to better understand and consolidate Nordstrom customer marketing strategies company-wide; managed design and development requirements of MVP, post-MVP and in production use cases specifically for the loyalty program customer base. This innovative customer tagging tool improved customer targeting accuracy by 97% and successfully launched the MVP for 20 audience groups., Adept at managing the development for Strategic Marketing Tools driving all components for launch for both minimum viable products (MVPs) as well as existing products to develop a more profound and holistic understanding of the Nordstrom customer., Skilled in business intelligence reporting and used insights to further define feature development - determined loyalty members drive ~70% of the sales which was selected as our target audience for MVP., Worked cross-functionally with stakeholders and business units to identify those requiring assistance and presented findings to leadership., Revamped and organized data storage libraries to prioritize and optimize the data acquisition process, establish customer requirements gathering process, and supported maintenance of customer-relevant data attributes., Created a prioritization process that enabled adding new attributes to assist in keeping a high-profile brand that brought in $25M to Nordstrom by adding these specific customer data attributes.
• Product Manager II, Blueprint Technologies, Bellevue, WA, 04/2020, 06/2021, Managed the data platform product lifecycle, including customer outreach and compiling customer feedback to drive roadmap requirements., Monitored software development through various meeting ceremonies, backlog prioritization, demos and created relevant documentation., Conducted product research and competitive analysis over many existing products related to data platforms and supply chain modeling., Conducted customer-facing demos and delivered product value propositions based on customer specific use cases., Planned product development and narrowed the scope by leveraging a specific supply chain use case featuring a lead time optimization model to facilitate a prototype build., Supported the Product Division-Data Platform and Monitoring Services unit with developing marketing content and campaign planning., Conducted sprint meetings to update and align the development team with timelines and deliverables status, ensuring the coordinated effort of product releases for marketing initiatives., Conducted design and sprint planning meetings to help facilitate builds and prioritize the backlog., Designed and monitored the development of a supply chain monitoring prototype- a lead-time optimization tool. Worked closely with data scientists to narrow the prototype scope and formalize a compelling customer story., Created and managed all customer help documentation and marketing content for the data platform product., Facilitate customer relations with a customer feedback tracker for the data platform and compiled all customer feedback to gather insights and provide a clear line of sight to the most compelling customer features and highlighted the business value-specific features., Compiled customer feedback for the privacy policy monitoring service to define the roadmap and facilitate requests from a major retail company using the platform., Managed the process monitoring platform and helped facilitate its needs across three separate use cases about employee onboarding, privacy policy compliance, and supply chain monitoring., Leveraged internal users as beta testers and conducted customer interviews for the employee onboarding monitoring system: documented pain points, feedback, and feature requests to guide future development.
• Product Manager II, Amazon, Seattle, WA, 06/2019, 03/2020, Managed and maintained the PerfectMile data platform roadmap., Communicated developments through regular biweekly updates coinciding with each tech sprint., Facilitated weekly Operational Excellence meetings and communications to address any operational concerns., Created user guides, demo presentations and conducted live demos of features and capabilities. Wrote a product training user guide illustrating product usage and practical use cases., Conducted monthly and quarterly business reviews (MBRs and QBRs) of the PerfectMile data platform and authored documents to provide leadership with business intelligence to make strategic business decisions., Addressed requirements' concerns, met with stakeholders to align on requirements for three feature builds (Permissions Control, Metrics White Paper, and Data Quality Monitoring/Alarms) and updated relevant Business Requirements Documents (BRDs).
• Program Manager II, Amazon, Seattle, WA, 01/2017, 06/2019, Managed the feature roadmap for several GSF products, including Last Mile Model, Last Mile Topology Optimization, and Routing Simulation Service., Maintained the roadmap and continuously reassessed the needs of the product. The features allowed for improvement in modeling and data accuracy and user interface enhancements., Tested the reliability and function of the implemented product features as well as communicated program status and requirements with the developers through Business Requirements Documents (BRDs) and biweekly sprints., Managed various last-mile analytical tools for simulating cost estimates and optimal locations based on delivery parameters by working with the Supply Chain Optimization Technology (SCOT) teams (Topology and MOP) to assess application feasibility in operational planning and new tools development., Wrote a Best Practices document to guide future usage of the Last Mile Model (LMM) tool and conducted deep dive analysis to validate the quality and data performance of the tool which provided the LMM tech team with the ability to change and refine the foundational data., Designed and created a reporting tool for the GSF Operations Integration team that monitored the week-over-week staging capacity for Whole Foods Market stores, enabled the rapid scaling of the business, and planned for capacity at 100+ store launches., Incorporated a new internal analytics tool to reduce the time to assess data integrity and complete data analysis as well as developed an offline tool to analyze business problems due to data integrity concerns with existing tools., Aided business teams in running optimizations and simulations to evaluate the cost per delivery and fulfillment center location feasibility based on varying metric inputs to assess business strategies before launches that enabled over 1,000+ simulations and analyses for over 100+ sites.
• Sr. Data Analyst, Brierley + Partners, Plano, TX, 06/2013, 05/2016, Provided database marketing services to meet business and customer engagement needs for a diverse portfolio of clients; data services included retail customer/transaction data and Omniture data., Used various R, SAS, Hadoop, SQL programming techniques, and Alteryx/XML (expert knowledge) to address data management and provide business solutions to clients., Worked closely with IT and developers to implement Hadoop/HIVE/HDFS/Spark system with data processing integrated with Alteryx environment., Developed data visualizations using Tableau, Excel, and PowerPoint software., Reduced data processing times for business solutions through data efficiency and automation techniques.
• Research Analyst, Buxton Customer Analytics, Fort Worth, TX, 11/2012, 06/2013, Built statistical models for retail and restaurant clients using transactional and household-level data and census-based and geographic data to answer critical business questions. Clients included Smoothie King, MC Sports, and Lupe Tortilla's Mexican Restaurant., Used various SAS/SQL programming techniques and Excel/VBA to address data management and analysis issues., Leveraged geospatial software (Alteryx/XML) to obtain various geospatial variables used in models.
• Associate Research Analyst, San Jacinto College, Pasadena, TX, 09/2011, 09/2012, Supported the District Office staff with business intelligence by conducting research and data analysis of several areas of the college's business operations., Fulfilled ad-hoc requests regarding data set tables and descriptive statistics to analyze variables within a data set (i.e., student enrollment, persistence, retention, and success rates across various demographics, course rubrics, and time)., Projected student enrollments for future terms to aid budgeting expectations and looked at trends across time., Conducted data analysis for various student surveys and wrote reports interpreting and explaining survey data., Formatted data sets and Excel spreadsheets to present student-level data in a user-friendly and concise manner., Built a predictive model using logistic regression methods to target student persistence rates., Refined and maintained the predictive model by implementing various statistical tests to assess the accuracy of the model.