„Never underestimate the impact of small decisions“ says Igor, Product Manager at MotionTools. Read on to learn about Igor’s experience at MotionTools, our typical ideation process, and how no week looks like the same to him.
Hannah: Good morning, Igor! Thanks for sharing your experience at MotionTools with us.
You have been at MotionTools for quite a while: What has been the most significant learning over the years?
Never underestimate the impact of small decisions. We have grown from supporting just one tenant in Berlin with a few deliveries a day to being a software provider for industry leaders across Europe. And this path was in part defined by small decisions we took. Every decision contributed to what eventually brought us to the stage we're in right now.
What is the best thing about being a product manager at MotionTools?
It's an opportunity to work on a wide range of features and products. Each week at MotionTools is unique. Today you craft the specifications to enable SEPA payments, tomorrow it's all about implementing support for packages, and on Friday, you are battling with the geocoding edge cases to improve the precision of address detection. We move at a high pace, but it's rewarding, and it feels good at the end of each week. Plus, you get an opportunity to work with different business use cases from car-sharing to instant grocery delivery and not just get to know them inside out but define best practices there.
Where do ideas for new features come from? How do you decide which ones to go for?
Ideas come from all the possible external and internal sources: from tenants and their end-users, from our team, our research and analytics. Each idea has a background; it can help achieve business goals, improve the experience, or broaden the range of supported use cases. We take in all ideas and move them through a pipeline of filters to see how they can contribute to the platform. Does the idea bring enough value? Does it solve a problem? Is that problem really a problem? What if we don't move forward with it? We're picky about ideas, but if an idea has survived, we can be confident it's the right one. And very often, an idea implementation suggested at the start of the pipeline is not the solution we end up building.
MotionTools in a few words: what makes the platform so special?
It's a one-stop-shop for any transportation business idea you might have. It evolves with the market and is capable of responding to any market challenge thrown at it.
What excites you most about the launches of the past few months, and which launches are you looking forward to the most?
The packages feature opened a new business vertical for us, and we're happy to support last-mile delivery companies that move boxes around. Personally, I'm also excited about the features we brought to the driver app. The My vehicle feature allows drivers to control their vehicles right from the app. The Custom Content feature enables tenants to define tasks drivers must perform at stops. For example, a tenant can ask a driver to verify the ID of a package recipient or make sure a driver picks something up on the way back. With the Custom Screens feature, a tenant can inject whole new sections into the app and control them from their backend. One tenant, for example, uses Custom Screens to show drivers an overview of the earned tips. These features give tenants unprecedented flexibility and the ability to build tailored solutions for their drivers leveraging universal platform features.
You work in a different timezone than the rest of your team. How have you designed your workflow around this?
I have 6 hours of time difference with Hamburg, which gives me 3-4 hours of overlap every morning. As a team, we mainly work asynchronously, and 3 hours is enough to make any syncs and have all the calls if needed. For me, the syncs are concentrated in the first part of the day and not spread across the day, which is a good thing!
Hannah: Thanks for taking the time, Igor! Have a great day!
Igor: Thanks for the chat and have a great evening!
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