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Neal Whitley - Resume
7419 Sylvan Ridge Rd • Indianapolis, IN 46240
Phone: 317.913.1646
e-mail: 'neal at nealwhitley.com'
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Online travel publishing company. |
- e-TravelMedia.com operates a series of
regionally targeted online travel guides that help travelers research,
plan and book vacations.
- Write and publish travel articles, photos, hotel reviews and local
activities.
- Produce the HTML, graphics, database design and integration, sales, marketing, SEO.
- Jack of all trades.
- Enjoying the rewards of being an entrepreneur.
- Sample Guides include: CaribbeanMag.com, RockiesGuide.com,
CaymansOnline.com, ExploreEurope.com, SandalsTripReviews.com, CaribbeanLinks.com, CaribbeanTrip.com
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e-Training / e-Learning company offering online training solutions to Fortune 1000 companies. |
- Managed the role out of SPAR Group's new
hosted Application Service Provider (ASP) e-Training product. Developed
business case, marketing approach and technical specs.
- Worked with management to translate business requirements into functional and technical specifications and worked with the development team to manage implementation. Co-managed a group of
5 programmers.
- Lead the product marketing efforts by defining unique product features, creating messaging and market positioning in the
industry which led to new collateral production.
- Redesigned the SparTraining.com sales website, enhancing the UI and providing new marketing, research and product sections.
- Developed competitive pricing research on competition and implemented a new pricing strategy that allowed SPAR to
maintain a competitive advantage over the competition.
- Provide senior management with market research and analysis and worked to develop marketing and product development budgets.
- Managed the direct mail/lead generation campaign that targets HR personnel and corporate trainers. Direct mailers include: postcards, CD-ROM's, email and traditional mail.
- Responsible for managing tradeshow implementation including: Booth design, vendor management, transportation services, marketing/handout development & printing.
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Small B2C & B2B e-commerce travel company offering online hotel reservations & content via niche regional travel guides. |
Maintained a dual role working in both Product and Business Development areas due to
small size and nature of WorldVacations.com.
1) Product Development:
- Managed the definition and production of site-wide design standards, ensuring that
they are executed consistently across 16 regional travel sites. Building of HTML mock-ups and technical documentation of new features & site areas. Working with the
technology team to help manage the transition from designs into functioning products
from development, testing, and launch within defined time frame and budget.
- Created business requirements, screen concepts and use cases. Also defined
requirements for creating new and modifying existing support applications for the sales,
support and billing of the travel products.
- New products include: User profile system, dynamic web based publishing tool, co-brand affiliate system, content syndication tools, reservations engine, newsletter
management tool and message board application.
- Interacted with technical development and the retail sales department to define user
experience and created a streamlined buying system tied into a customized online
accounting, tracking and affiliate database.
- Designed technical docs for a dynamic publishing system based on Allaire's Cold
Fusion Spectra product. System is based on an object oriented SQL based tool that
allows non-technical users to create and manage layered content from any web
browser. Allowed for easy expansion of content across multiple travel sites by using a
shared content database.
- Researching potential partners and competitors and developing competitive
documentation to define further development and enhanced member services.
- Trained sales staff on site features and benefits, which lead to enhanced customer
service.
- Oversaw technical development team on implementation projects in conjunction with
Technical Director.
- Increased regional travel guides 4 fold from 4 to 16 guides.
2) Business Development:
- In charge of developing and growing new markets for a small E-Commerce travel
business. Growing hotel partner and tour base including independent and chain hotels.
Develop marketing & sales partnerships with other established regional travel guides.
Manage and grow our travel product(s) by identifying new revenue models and
monitizing. Building incremental revenues by developing new product features for travel
related add-on sales opportunities.
- Developed deep relationships with hotel suppliers obtaining preferred rates and
developing sales strategies to increase revenues.
- Partnerships: Developed content partnerships & distribution partnerships with regional
online content providers and print publishers including Hunter Publishing & ASE.net
- Traffic: Created and managed search engine submission and optimization program,
which generates over 750,000 unique users per month.
- Managed one Business Development Manager and Graphic Designer.
- Increased current property contract base by 100%, from 115 properties to 240. With
contract rates 15% higher than industry standard which doubled sales over the past 12
months.
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Top ranking women's
network. |
- Continued FamilyPoint.com responsibilities (see below). iVillage.com purchased
FamilyPoint.com in 1999.
- iVillage Clubs: Took the FamilyPoint.com club style technology and created new
product and feature sets, which were incorporated channel wide into iVillage Club areas.
- Worked with cross-functional team including design, business development and project
managers to implement total transition of the FamilyPoint.com product into an iVillage
product.
- Implemented new iVillage.com clubs, based on Vignette's Story Server, to completely
interface with FamilyPoint.com's Cold Fusion technology.
- New clubs led to enhanced user features and gave iVillage.com a solid viral marketing
tool to drive membership across multiple channels.
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Family centric member based club site offering families tools to create and maintain their own meeting place. |
- Responsible for product development and project implementation that fills the end
user needs and business goals for family centric club community. Maintained
responsibility for the development, concept, focus, feature set, coordination and quality
of FamilyPoint.com features. Managed the functional spec writing, usability testing,
HTML mock-up designs, production and launch of new features sets.
- Assumed role as project manager interacting with vendors, co-brand & private label
clients, sales/marketing team, and internal technical teams on multiple co-brand
projects. Resulted in proven ability to work with a cross- functional team in the creation
of technology products and solutions that interface with different technologies.
- Developed feature sets in a dynamic database intensive environment and managed
the production process with the director of the technical team. Gained experience
working directly with customers, partners, and sales force to develop these product
requirements. Resulted in 10+ new feature sets.
- Researched technical vendors (code purchases, site monitoring, software etc.) and
made purchasing recommendations. These recommendations lead to over a dozen
purchases.
- Provided management competitive analysis and research on competitors and various
product lines.
- Worked with Marketing Manager on developing and implementing viral marketing
initiatives that drove membership to over 1 million members.
- Owned site monitoring & server performance measurements from an end-user's
perspective via Service Metrics – http://servicemetrics.com. Lead to an improved site,
ISP and server performance.
- Co-managed 4 programmers, in the product development projects.
- Managed 2 college interns.
- Sold FamilyPoint.com to iVillage.com for $30 million.
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Small B2C & B2B e-commerce travel company offering online hotel reservations & content via niche regional travel guides. |
- In charge of developing and growing new markets for a small E-Commerce travel
business. Growing hotel partner base. Increasing web traffic to destination web sites.
Data mining current client and consumer base to increase reservations. Develop
partnerships with ISP's and regional travel guides. Managed and grew travel
product(s) by identifying new revenue models and monitizing.
- Managed 4 university marketing interns.
- Grew hotel property base by 23%.
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Internet portal for the city of
New Orleans, LA. |
- New business development and sales. Sold web development, hosting & advertising
under the NewOrleans.com brand.
- Prospected and sold advertising and marketing strategies for the travel & hospitality
industry in New Orleans.
- Project manager for over 50 small business web sites.
- Clients included: Tabasco, Bell South, Cox Communications & University of Phoenix.
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12/1994 Bachelor's Degree - B.A., Economics
Indiana University Bloomington, IN |
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(WORKING KNOWLEDGE AND SOLID PRODUCTION EXPERIENCE)
Cold Fusion Applications & Cold Fusion Studio, Advanced HTML, Adobe Photoshop & Image Ready, Java Scripts, GIF animation, MySQL Databases, Access, CGI / Perl, Alliare Spectra Publishing Tools, Server File Structures, FTP Clients, Web Database Design and Integration, UNIX, NT, 98, 2000, Telnet, Other Web Tools, Visio, Power Point, Excel,
Word, Quark |
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- Alpha Tau Omega fraternity: 1990 - 1994
- Indiana University Rugby Club: 1991 - 1993
- Awarded Eagle Scout Honors; 1988
- Awarded the Raymond C. Firestone Award; for leadership and excellence in Scouting.
1987 |
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- Thrive in cross-functional teams, involved in many aspects of current and past businesses including: marketing, product management, web production, systems development, sales and business development.
- Eye for detail, layout, and design tied into the technical architecture.
- Ability to manage multiple projects and work well in teams.
- Strong project-management and communication skills.
- Handle very fast paced environment and meet or exceed objectives.
- Entrepreneurial spirit with ability to make decisions effectively.
- Master at search engine optimization. |
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$150,000 depending on total
compensation package. |
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Willing to relocate for the right
opportunity. |
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References available upon request.
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