As of today, as a project leader and consultant, I assist in monetizing data and integrating AI into products or services. Moreover, I collaborate with executives to boost revenue, minimize churn, and improve process automation by leveraging data.
1. It all started 17 years ago
My history and passion for driving effective go-to-market strategy for new and redesigned products have begun with running my startups.
Raising money from venture capitals, leading end-to-end business model implementation processes, delivering superior business results, and failing some of my businesses helped me understand extraordinary startups' essence.
My 17 years journey in the product launch and product development process honed my approach to business. I believe that successful products belong to customers more than product managers.
2. I work in the global arena, and I am a metrics-driven leader
My main focus is on data and artificial intelligence. I recognize that organizations may not have the bandwidth to explore their data resources fully, or they may be unaware of the data's potential for monetization. As such, my role involves assessing the data, making recommendations, and ensuring that artificial intelligence can aid in combating churn, increasing adoption, and improving the bottom line.
I have experience working with companies across Europe, North America, and Africa, gaining knowledge about cultural differences through hands-on experience and working collaboratively within diverse, international teams.
3. "Calculable impact and precise deliverables are a business consultant MUSTs" - Arek Skuza
The following firms have trusted me:
- IKEA (retail, global corporation),
- Shell (oil&energy, global corporation),
- Bayer (pharmaceuticals, global corporation),
- Roche (pharmaceuticals, global corporation),
- K2 (mid-size, digital agency),
- PKO BP (the biggest bank in Central Eastern Europe),
- Profsa (startup),
- Zenka (startup),
- Modoma (mid-size company),
- Discovery Networks (entertainment, global corporation),
- Allegro (top ten eCommerce platform),
- BuyBox (startup),
- Legimi (startup),
- Infopulse Ukraine (large size, business services and IT, global corporation),
- Nova Tracking (startup),
- Benefit Systems (mid-size, wellness and fitness company)
Throughout the years, as a business manager and consultant, I helped many of those companies to:
- revamp business models and implement data-driven improvements through in-depth analytics
- redefine product definitions and establish use cases for implementing AI to enhance products and services with predictive components
- come up with new products, services, and microservices,
- decide about their investment in machine learning and artificial intelligence,
- build and run AI teams, and teach them to monetize ML and AI quickly,
- execute product roadmaps and business plans based on data management, with the objective of monetizing the data
I always bring calculable impact, and here you can find a few examples of the outcome which my projects delivered:
- Built an Intelligent Digital Assets Recognition and Standardization Program for a global CPG company via machine learning, image recognition, and OCR technologies. The project reduced costs by $120,000 in one product category, yearly, per country, and $1,400,000 across 12 categories per market on average. Cost savings from 12 markets are $11,500,000 per year. The method delivers 8-12x speed in innovation performance.
- For a leading American TV and Entertainment company, cut 18 months from product development time, delivering 7X ROI improvement over previous internal innovation effort. Arek had fewer internal resources involved: 4 senior managers/directors 1 day a week for 100 days. Arek delivered £365,000 in savings to the R&D budget vs. previous efforts, allowing the global company to do more for less per £ of R&D.
- For the 8th biggest European eCommerce company, Arek worked collaboratively with CTO, CMO, to launch a visual search service within the B2C mobile app with 70 mln monthly active users. Designed and executed six months roadmap for discovering customers' pains and gains before launching the visual search features to client's customers. Brought ~30% time savings in the process of launching micro-service, designed agile, cross-functional team, and improve the velocity of PLC cycle by ~12%
- For a global company, Arek Skuza designed content strategy and launched an independent lead generation environment which increased acquisition, retention, and referrals level by +500%, built and led an agile team of hand-picked content specialists which cut the time-to-market time by ~35%
3. I teach and coach executives and product teams
I have already delivered more than 60 lectures and workshops in Europe and the USA.
I love to share my experience, as I believe it can help business owners, executives, and managers to make better product decisions. Check out the resources which I keep developing every day:
Arek Skuza social media channels:
eBook, journals, and podcasts:
My posts have high visibility (10000 +) and are very engaging since I usually share many data, case studies, and business cases.
4. After business hours
My passion led me to work with global teams located in UK, USA, CEE, and CEEME&A, and to live in four culturally diverse cities - London, Warsaw, Edmonton, and Dallas – which influenced my sensitivity, my capacity to form networks, and my ability to recognize and respond quickly to emerging global opportunities.
In my personal life, I am a husband and father of Kuba and Alex. I am a dedicated angler, basketball player, and traveler.
I have lived and worked as a management consultant and project leader, in
- Canada,
- Mexico,
- the United Kingdom,
- and presently call Dallas, Texas, home.
