mark jennings

* Responsible for all Marketing activities and Business strategy for a stealth touch startup. Duties include: * Develop and execute Go To Market strategy for the touch technology under development, this includes TAM/SAM/SOM analysis, business model and revenue forecast for potential target markets * Identify and engage prospective Customers to present Sentons value proposition and secure design win engagement to initiate revenue * Provide target market requirements to Engineering to align priorities and execution * Develop and deploy website with vertical market segmentation and collateral, website also has subscription capability to enable targeting to specific stakeholders across a very broad touch enabling market

Managed all Tier 1 Customer Support (module and Chip sale) for the company. Upon accepting the role, company had no formal Applications Engineering infrastructure. Created a group charter including roles and responsibilities definition. Acquired key talent in a timely fashion. Established an issue reporting system with SLA measurement capability. Developed and deployed a technical training system that incorporated online streamed coursework with additional written collateral and testing to ensure and measure retention. Provided technical training to FAE staff worldwide using training conferences organized twice per year. Greatly reduced the impact on Engineering exposure to Customer issues to the extent that typically only alpha and beta engagements required direct interaction between Customer and Engineering.

Responsible for technical sales support for Dell and HP. This required visits to Dell and HP HQ at least once per month and more during the RFQ cycle. Established relationships with Platform Architects and Development Managers on design wins and platform engagements. Provided technical leadership to all Worldwide Field Application Engineers. Managed the creation of all technical training. Training events were conducted at key locations both at HQ as well as Regional Design Centers. Training collateral was created using 360 feedback on FAE staff by their peers. Influenced platforms to ensure that our designs were written in before the OEM would RFQ out to the ODMs. Acted as Account Manager for Dell and HP. The contribution revenue of those two accounts at that time was over 50% of the total company revenue. Established the creation of online Customer Design Worksheets. These worksheets are still used by FAEs to bring new customer opportunities into the Design Centers.

Managed a team of Systems Engineers that were responsible for all revenue producing design wins. Was given the task of institutionalizing project management in the company. Ramped up the project management team from 2 to 13 project managers over a 2 year period. Established a metrics reporting system that improved on-time sample delivery from 37% to 97% short of six months. Managed the effort to scope out the complexity of new design opportunities. By interacting with a cross functional team, guided the design proposals toward a viable design. Upon seeing the variability of the quality of the requests coming from the field, I established FAE training to enable quicker, more direct technical sales support to the Customer. Lead an effort to reduce sample turns for a given design win by establishing a pareto for the reasons for the PCB spin. Improvements over a 18 month period improved throughput by 25% without requiring additional headcount. Responsible to provide resources for System level qualification of new ASICs under development.

Responsible for all the hardware development of a GPS, GSM enabled wireless device. The device would push advertising content to the user based on their location or patterns of locations that the user would frequent. Compaq was to brand the device as part of their ipaq line on the Voicestream network. Part of the team to define the feature set of the device. Managed an external design services team. Managed hardware development budget of $2M. Identified and interacted with all the technology suppliers. Worked with the Asian ODM to ensure a smooth transition into production. Liased with Compaq Purchasing, Marketing, Industrial Design regularly.

Responsible for the commercial management of a $6-8M design services business. Location technology being defined as asset tracking, E911, child and pet tracking, etc. This included technologies such as GPS, cellular and other wireless air interfaces. Responsible for total commercial management of customers contracting design services in the location business area including contract negotiation, pricing, fulfillment, etc. Responsible for forecasting and securing revenue in my business area through marketing and business development activities. Sought out design partnerships with strategic technology suppliers using market research to target new areas that would benefit from location technologies, fueling leads to sales. Add value to the Customer by providing a consulting role to enable their success. Used my technical and project management background to ensure that proposals were presented to prospects and adequately scoped and defined in terms of cost, resourcing and schedule.

Responsible for evaluating new technologies consistent with PMCG’s Windows CE product line and aided in steering the strategic product roadmap by creating new product napkins and business plans to realize these emerging technologies. Understand and seek out new technologies. Negotiation with partners for joint development. Sought out 3rd party products that can enhance the Philips Nino product line offering. Responsible for driving the feasibility phase of new product ideas. Facilitation of focus group studies and subsystem evaluation studies. Conducted design workshops, refined cost structure and coordinated all design document creation. At Microsoft’s request, I was asked to represent Windows CE on a panel discussion at the Embedded Systems Conference in 1999. Provided requirements to other Philips business units to help foster product synergies. A member of the Philips Bluetooth Special Interest Group.

Development Team Manager responsible for a $4.5M development budget for the Philips Nino 300 Windows CE palm size PC. At product launch, Nino was selling number one nationwide in its category and had won the 1999 CES Innovations Award and the IFA Product Design Award for 1999. Two versions deployed worldwide, localized to several different languages. Full technical responsibility for the entire Nino development including accessories. Accessories included third party applications, wired and wireless data connectivity. Worked with product marketing in determining marketing requirements. Chief technical liaison to a 27 person team at Samsung as the ODM. Creation and tracking of full development schedule. Conducted design feasibility studies. Determined and engaged an outside mechanical design house for the Nino mechanical design.