A Day In The Life of A Product Manager

My day-to-day is quite exciting now that Gray Dawes is a global business! When I first turn on my PC in the morning, the first thing I’ll do is I’ll review anything that’s gone on overnight from the US or Australia, and see if there’s anything I need to catch up on. We recently went live with our full global tech stack in Miami, so it’s all new for colleagues there and I like to keep in the loop.

Then I’ll catch up with my team. We have a weekly stand-up, but each day I’ll take the time to see what’s going on because the next day is never the same as the day before. My team falls into different sections. I’ve got application support, systems integration and technical implementation. Those 3 categories require different areas of oversight.

Application support looks after about 30 applications that Gray Dawes uses internally and externally. YourTrip is the big one, but we also oversee everything else in between, from the application that manages traveler expenses to various things that nobody has ever heard of, running in the background, keeping things ticking over.

Systems integration manages a lot of the migration and acquisition type work that we do. For example, when we acquired MP Travel in Australia, the team helped everyone to adjust to Gray Dawes systems smoothly and effectively. The technical implementation team are responsible for helping onboard new clients, building sites for them, and holding meetings to discuss our technology, how it works, and what they can do to get the most value out of it.

There are so many things I love about my job.

For starters, I enjoy chairing the Advantage Technology Group. I am a massive fan of technology in all of its forms, and getting to see and talk about all of the cool and often far-fetched future tech is brilliant. The recent AI showcase, for example, was eye-opening –  you have all of the chat about “the machines taking over”, but you can’t help but think “Wow, the amount of power and the level of infrastructure that these AI processes need to run is staggering”. There’s still such a long way to go.

Another of my favourite parts about my role is implementing new stuff. When we discover that we need a new supplier for something or one of the Sales or Account Management teams requires something new for a client that we get to build from scratch, it becomes the highlight of my day. Being able to develop something from the beginning, test it, roll it out, bring something new to market, watch a customer use it – it’s so cool to see.

First and foremost you’ve got to love technology and you’ve got to love your industry. In terms of skills, the big one is problem-solving – you’ve got to be good at working out ways in which you can help make people’s lives better with technology.

You’ve also got to be focused on efficiency. As someone who has been in the travel management business for a while, I have seen how long things can take and the importance of streamlining processes to improve ROI cannot be underestimated.

There’s no point in bringing in new technology if it’s not going to do anything of value, even if it looks cool.

As a Product Manager in its broadest sense, you’ve got to love your products. I’m not talking about Apple or Samsung or Android, or whatever; I mean products that impact your industry. This year, I visited the Travel Technology Show and it was really interesting seeing what people were doing. If you can walk around industry shows like that for four or five hours without getting bored, then Product Management is the right place for you!