Software as a Service Experts in Düsseldorf

Project: Design and implementation of an AI product for four business use cases

Project management for an AI project at a leading provider of large-scale catering and food services, where a production-ready AI product for four use cases was implemented together with an external development partner: automated briefings based on CRM and document data, voice-based capture and structuring of reports, detection and consolidation of duplicates in master data, and data-based market analyses. A key focus was a data-protection-compliant architecture that passed the internal IT security review and enabled production use.

• Translation of business requirements into clearly defined AI use cases with a focused product scope and clear value proposition
• Selection and evaluation of models and architecture options for text extraction, speech-to-text, and context enrichment from business systems, including LLM integration, function calling, and retrieval
• Development and implementation of an architecture with European hosting, data minimization, and masking of personal data as a prerequisite for approval
• Management of interfaces between business departments, IT, IT security, and the external development partner under restrictive data access conditions
• Coordination with the CIO and executive management levels on data access, risk assessment, and approval decisions
• Preparation for the transition to production use

• Creation of complete bilingual (DE/EN) security and emergency documentation: Business Continuity Plan / Disaster Recovery Plan, Incident Response Plan v2.0 with four case-specific playbooks (PICERL), Access Control Policy, Vulnerability Management Policy, Business Resilience Programme, Risk Governance Plan
• Consolidation into an integrated emergency manual (12 chapters) with immediate-action checklists for six emergency scenarios, a prioritized action table and a formal approval structure
• Review and documentation of the applicability of NIS2 and HinSchG, including the legal justification for non-applicability

• Responsible for driving digital transformation and aligning country organizations with the Rhenus platform model

• Initiated the digital transformation roadmap for five countries, ensuring alignment with global group strategy

• Built and led a high-performing digital transformation consulting team, expanding delivery capacity from one to three value streams and thereby fast tracking the roadmap from 3 to 2 years

• Acted as strategic advocate for 5 country organizations, ensuring group-wide cross-functional alignment

• Redefined business analysis into an agile approach, reducing time-to-value for platform harmonization by 50%

• Advisory roles across SaaS, retail, consumer, industrial tech, and life science
• Focusing on GTM, pricing, CRM and digital transformation

• Responsible for qualifying & upselling new business
• 360 degree management of sales cycle
• Development of go-to-market strategies for SMEs and enterprise

• Led the global HRIS transformation program (16 country units): program setup, PMO, phase planning, status reporting, and steering up to partner/SteerCo level
• Built an HR readiness assessment framework (6 dimensions, weighted scoring) as a decision basis for implementation and AI maturity — mandated by the board as the project outcome
• HR process architecture: analysis of 80+ level-3 processes and 87 ISO process documentations across 13 country clusters; gap analysis and harmonization roadmap
• Designed agentic AI HR processes (hiring, onboarding, probation period management) on SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud and ServiceNow — human-in-the-loop design, process screening for agentic potential, decision paper at partner level
• HRIS market analysis: vendor screening, criteria framework, and evaluation logic for system selection
• HR target operating model: organizational analysis, archetype framework (9 dimensions), governance design for a global HR function
• Self-assessment tools and workshop formats for 16 country HR teams incl. nomination and stakeholder management; SharePoint project hub and communication architecture
• AI-supported consulting delivery: my own Claude-based working model for analysis, document creation, and project management — one consultant delivering program output

• Founded technology consulting practice delivering business strategy & operations, digital transformation, and enterprise tech & innovation services to telecommunications, cybersecurity, and IT enterprise clients, leveraging 15+ years of Fortune 500 sector expertise
• Developing digital transformation and modernization strategies for legacy system optimization, cloud-native implementations, and operational process enhancement using proven PRINCE2 and agile methodologies
• Building consulting frameworks for project & product management, portfolio governance, and business coaching services while establishing initial client relationships in EMEA markets

• Define EMEA ISV Go-to-Market strategy to push indirect SaaS sales
• Solve customer problems with AI embedding into new use cases and solutions
• Build partner ecosystem and sell partner solutions to drive platform consumption
• Enable cross-functional teams on AI use cases implementation
• Manage a cross-functional team of 7 FTE
• Built EMEA partner originated pipeline from scratch with 70 mn€ TCV and 20 mn€ ARR growth sales with cloud-based and hybrid solutions
• Increased co-sell rate from 20% to 40% and co-delivery rate from 25% to over 50%

• Introduction of giro card with Visa Debit card payment function (Combocard) for Commerzbank
• Support for the Card Processing Team (card processing; Clearing & Settlement incl. Dispute Management teams) in project work
• Creation of requirements for the Clearing & Settlement team, Authorization team (AZ) and Card Production team (KP) as part of a requirements catalog
• Requirements engineering (requirements management) with business contact person
• Participation in workstream meetings between VISA Inc., SRC Security Research & Consulting GmbH, Commerzbank AG and consulting firms (PwC and Senacor Technologies AG)
• Sprint planning with Jira tickets of type Task and use of Confluence
• Creation and presentation of weekly status reports for the Clearing & Settlement, Dispute Management and Reporting & GUI workstreams
• Coordination with network and file transfer teams for connection tests of new interfaces, e.g. setup of host keys, use of VPN or sipnet connections
• Coordination of the delivery of test files, e.g. exchange rates (FX rates; TC 56 of VISA rates), VISA Debit and Credit transactions (format Base II) and EANSS/ISS Base II clearing files to the Debit Clearing System (DCS)
• Conducting coordination meetings on the use of Visanet Settlement Service (VSS) and PSD2 reports and payment traffic statistics (ZVS)
• Organizing workshops with FiServ (First Data) on Dispute Management and complaint handling
• Setup and maintenance of Open Point List (OPL) in Confluence
• Technologies/methods: Jira, Confluence, giro card, VISA Debit card, payments, Kanban board, BIN, routing, CIQ, VPAY, ScalaTest, Dispute Management

• Hybrid/Remote
• Digitalisation introduction and optimisation of software
• Advice on the introduction of AI
• Data & AI strategy
• Interim / tech consultant
• Product, process & management
• Vendor management
• Compliance management platforms (ISO 27001, GDPR, EU AI Act)
• M&A due diligence & analysis

• Iterated an MVP for an autonomous vehicle platform in close collaboration with potential customers
• Conducted comprehensive market research, persona analysis and validation tests

Architected the strategic transition of the legacy customer base from license/maintenance contracts to a subscription model.

• Migration Strategy: Designed the commercial architecture and pricing frameworks; aligned Product, Marketing, and Sales teams to pivot the legacy install base toward ARR-based models.
• Pilot Program: Executed a "forced upsell" pilot resulting in a 2x uplift and generating €250k+ in incremental ARR within the initial cohort of 12 enterprise clients.

• Architecting and developing SaaS platform for graphical definition and execution of pandas data processing pipelines
• Developed POlyglott, an open-source Python CLI tool for translation workflow management featuring PO file parsing, quality linting with glossary enforcement, and DeepL API integration for machine translation
• Developed web application for material compliance management (EU REACH) using Django and modern web technologies
• Built automated infrastructure platform using Proxmox, Terraform, and Ansible — VM provisioning, configuration management, internal DNS, and fleet-wide security hardening across multiple subnets

• Full focus on AI-augmented web development
• Building and running three proprietary AI-native SaaS products (BrainButler, PageUpgrade, termin365)
• Developing a self-hosted business stack for digital sovereignty
• Daily workflow with Claude as engineering partner and Anthropic/OpenAI APIs for product features
• Using RAG systems with custom vector databases and prompt engineering for complex multi-step pipelines
• Tech stack: Python/FastAPI (backend), React/TypeScript (frontend), WordPress plugin architectures (PHP), multi-tenant systems with per-user encryption