Les professionnels de GBNews.ch s'allient à la puissance des technologies en intelligence artificielle générative, pour informer la communauté des affaires et le grand public, des dernières tendances et des évolutions du marché de l'emploi.
What does a Senior Product Manager do in the financial data sector? What does it imply? Peter Wilson tells us how a Kiwi who initially studied English to become a journalist ended up entering the banking industry, which led him to be a Senior Product Manager in a mass media financial information company.
After graduating, Peter joined a graduate program at the Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) Bank in Wellington in 1986, thanks to an opportunity through his family network. When asked by the manager six months later what field in finance he was interested in, he said “treasury”, having heard it was a promising field at the time.
Indeed, the market was opening and banking activities were beginning to thrive. According to Wikipedia, “Between 1984 and 1993, New Zealand changed from a somewhat closed and centrally controlled economy to one of the most open economies in the OECD. In a process often referred to in New Zealand as Rogernomics, successive governments introduced policies which dramatically liberalised the economy.” Wikipedia, Economy of New Zealand
After having expressed his desire to go into treasury, Peter joined different teams in the bank’s treasury unit. He first worked in the team that dealt with futures, interest rate futures and commodity futures.
After that, he was appointed Dealer in the Money Market team where he undertook all short term interest rate dealing, so generally all financial instruments that are less than one year in maturity. They included cash, 90 days bills, Certificates of Deposits, one year bonds and Forward Rate agreements.
In 1988, Peter left the ANZ Bank to become Chief Dealer in the Trust Bank New Zealand. In charge of managing 15 traders, he helped establish the central Treasury dealing room following the amalgamation of the regional Trust banks. In his role, he was also member of the Trust Bank Asset, member of Liability committee and the Treasury Strategy committee. He was even invited to be Committee member of the New Zealand Financial Markets Association.
He joined Reuters in Auckland as Product Specialist after the Trust Bank was bought out by Westpac Bank in 1996. That was a turning point in his profession, as he switched to the “other side” of the financial market, or as he says, “from client to vendor”. His ten years working in banks using a financial markets information system gave him the understanding of what to produce for them.
In 2001, he left New Zealand as he was offered a job as Business Development Manager in Thomson Reuters Geneva, where he made his way up. In business development, he built a financial analytics calculator with his clients, and gathered their feedback on the product so as to make user process as simple as possible. In 2006, Peter was transferred to the Global Equity group within Thomson Reuters, where he was appointed Product Manager and then Senior Product Manager.
Peter likes to say he had a “Matrix position” since he was following every aspect of the software development life cycle (SDLC), from the requirements expressed by the client to the design, development and presentation of the financial market information.
“Facing inwards” as he says, Peter acted as the internal person of reference, coordinating the different projects. On a daily basis, he was in contact with many departments, including the business team, the developers and the channel (client-facing) colleagues, to make sure that everyone stayed aligned with the roadmap and deadline. As he was “dealing with requirements”, Peter would, for example, check with the Content Team if certain content was available and if not, how to get it.
In his position, Peter had the complete overview in detail, which may seem contradictory. Actually, it means that not only did he have a ‘helicopter view´ of what was happening as a project manager would have, but he also knew and understood the different steps and what they involved. Peter had to be the master of turning ideas into products, applying the knowledge he had acquired in the finance sector and even using his creativity to design mockups and user stories for the requirements.
To help the different units align with the wishes and deadlines of the client, Peter had to figure out those needs, validate the options, plan the roadmap and prioritize activities according to schedule. Q&A sessions and meetings with the different stakeholders were part of his work day.
At the end of the day, if someone had a question about any work in progress, the Senior Product Manager had to have the answer. To succeed in such a position, Peter had to have strong interpersonal skills, a lot of patience, and a general awareness of what was happening around him. Clear communication and resistance to pressure are as important as detail-orientation and problem-solving skills in getting the job done. In the more creative part of his job, Peter was sensitive to users’ needs, deciding even colour, font and positioning of the content.
In order to keep up-to-date with clients' needs, Peter was also asked to meet with them on a regular basis and evaluate what they thought of the company and the products. That way, he could gather direct feedback on user experience, which helped the projects meet client expectations.
So what, concretely, did this all-important job entail? Essentially, a bank needed information about the market, the Senior Product Manager identified the requests in detail, organized the ideas into the roadmap through prioritizing and validating, collaborating with the various teams and finally designed their product.
The job therefore included a fair amount of project management, however, he had to have a good amount of knowledge about the SDLC in its whole. It was also important for him to build trust, based on his awareness and availability.
Peter’s advice for someone who wants to be a Product Manager is the following: first, he suggests acquiring as much knowledge as possible in the domain of the product itself, through experience in other positions, such as Business Analyst, Product Specialist or even a job in Sales. His second tip is about competences - to be an efficient and organized Product Manager, it’s important to acquire coordination and management skills. Ultimately, the combination of both of these aspects – technical expertise and soft skills – is the key to becoming a successful Product Manager.
Photo: © Dmitriy Shironosov | Dreamstime.com - Digital financial data
A very interesting interview and article Laura. Peter seems to have had a wide experience in the business and has good advice for new Product Managers coming into business.