Julio Navas

Proven global technology leader with over 30 years of experience in software architecture, product definition, and global team leadership within the B2B SaaS and enterprise software industries. Demonstrated expertise in leading large, diverse software organizations, overseeing end-to-end product development, and driving software validation, verification, and integration. Successfully scaled global teams of 100+ engineers and AI/ML specialists, launched 9 innovative products, and established strategic partnerships with industry leaders like SAP, Discover, and AMEX.

Skilled in identifying industry trends, executing competitive analysis, and aligning product strategies with market needs. Recognized for optimizing processes, accelerating time-to-market, and delivering scalable, high-performance solutions that drive revenue growth and market leadership.

Experience

● 30+ years of product development experience

● 21+ years executive leadership leading global Product Marketing, Product Management and Engi-neering

● 10+ years delivering B2B enterprise-class SaaS products

● 8+ Years as market category & product portfolio owner

Revenue

● $12M Raised in Start-up Venture Financing

● 10X new customers, 4X non-U.S. revenue, +25% U.S. revenue, 14k+ suppliers, and $60B+/year payments achieved for new SAP financial products

● 5X year-over-year increase in MQLs leading to multi-million-dollar increase in sales pipeline

Innovation

● 9 new products innovated including ideation, funding, development, and market deployment

● 50 countries achieved for product globalization and global growth

● 97% decrease in supplier onboarding time and 80% reduction in partner integration time through data and metric based improvements

AI / ML

● 30%-50% savings achieved using AI to solve intractable supply chain and human resources problems

Leadership

● Manager-of-managers for a global team of Solution Management, 9 Product Managers, 100+ Engineers, and 13 Deep Learning AI/ML engineers

● Grew B2B payments team from 5 to 54 with sales, operations, product, marketing, and engineering

Ecosystems

● 11 partners, 55 financing funders, and 2 internal VARs achieved for a new global partner ecosystem

● Secured SAP Industry Cloud Preferred Partner and SAP Store Spotlight (top 0.16% of partners)

Awards

● 2-time winner of the SAP Employee-of-the-Year award and several top industry awards

Publications

● Engineering Leadership book with focus on Product, AI, and Career

● 6 Patents Granted

Convergent Information Systems Concord, California

VP, Solution Management & Marketing 11/2020 – 2/2024

Led the product strategy and marketing team and the effort to define the market opportunity, differentiation, and solutions.

• Revenue: 5X y-o-y increase in Marketing Qualified Leads leading to multi-million-dollar increase in sales pipeline. 
• Ecosystems: Established SAP procurement partnership achieving SAP Store Spotlight (top 0.16% of SAP partners), SAP Industry Cloud Preferred Solution (top 1% of SAP partners), and beat out 5 other competitors for a strategic SAP Endorsed partnership for the new procurement Intake Management market space. 

SAP Labs Palo Alto, California

VP, Advanced Technology, SuccessFactors 01/2018 – 05/2019

Worked to build and promote a compelling entrepreneurship vision, innovation strategy, governance, and decision gate process.

• Innovation: Achieved President-level funding for a new employee payroll payments and financing product with $1.8B market opportunity. Analyzed financial data from 6,000 companies, 8,200 SAP Payroll customers, and 8 years of census payroll data. 
• Artificial Intelligence: Leveraged AI/ML plus demographic, census, psychographic, cellular, and human resources data to help companies better recruit and serve their employees. Showed 50% savings for retail customers for new stores. 
• Ecosystems: Negotiated and achieved Letter of Intent for Discover Financial as the payroll payments financial partner.

Sr. Director, Solution Management, Supply Chain, Ariba 06/2017-12/2017

Constructed a technology and business ecosystem for Ariba Supply Chain.

• Innovation: Achieved President-level funding for a new digital manufacturing market product with $100B market opportunity. Identified a durable differentiating advantage of 31k suppliers across 125 countries on the Ariba Network. 
• Artificial Intelligence: Used AI/ML to automatically discover and assess the financial health of a company's entire multi-level supply chain with deep-dive capabilities down to individual suppliers. 
• Mobile: Integrated supply chain visibility into the SAP Mobile App. 

Sr. Director, Financial Solutions, Ariba 11/2013-06/2017

Global head of the financial market product portfolio for Ariba Business Network.

• Revenue: 10X new customers, 4X non-U.S. revenue, +25% U.S. revenueand driving over $200M in sell side revenue
• Innovation: Created new B2B electronic payments, Supply Chain Finance, and Services Invoicing products, as well as Purchase Order-Based Financing pilot. Within 3 years, achieved 85 new enterprise customers, 14k suppliers onboarded, $60B+/year payment throughput, and an additional backlog of $25B/year in payments being onboarded. 
• Artificial Intelligence: Created an Ariba FICO-like score and showed 30% savings for suppliers on their financing.
• Leadership: Global Manager of managers directing Product Marketing, 9 Product Managers, 100+ Engineers, and 13 Deep Learning AI/ML engineers with people in the U.S., South America, Europe, and India. Grew the B2B payments team from 5 engineers to a business unit of 54 people with sales, operations, product, marketing, and engineering.
• Ecosystems: Developed a financial platform and ecosystem with Discover, First Data, AMEX, Prime Revenue, 55 global financing funders, 2 application clients, and 7 new global eInvoicing partnerships. 
• Globalization: Expanded eInvoicing to 50 countries, Payments to 34 countries, Dynamic Discounting to 22 countries, and Supply Chain Finance to 42 countries.
• Process Improvements: Decreased partner integration time by 80% and supplier onboarding time by 97%. Achieved 12X savings in quality assurance time and cost through conversion to cloud-native implementation. 
• Awards: SAP Hasso Plattner Award (employee of the year), PYMNT.COM's Most Innovative and Most Disruptive Gold Awards, and Global Finance Magazine’s Best Invoice Discount Management Award.

Line Manager, Event & Data Federation, BusinessObjects (Paris, France) 06/2009-10/2013

Globally led SAP’s market category of Operational Business Intelligence.

• Revenue: Operational BI product overachieved first year sales targets with 23 customers, 13 partners, product value of €4M sold, new SAP eCare health-care solution and 4 new rapid-deployment-solutions. HANA Federation gained 10 customers and enabled $10M in sales immediately after launch. 
• Innovation: Launched Operational BI product using Complex Event Processing and achieving 3X faster processing. Launched HANA Federation product in 50% less time by extending the HANA DB optimizer and allowing HANA DB to execute in-memory data sourced from multiple data warehouses. Enhanced the BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform’s cloud-based semantic layer with federation technology giving it a multi-database capability. 
• Leadership: Global Manager-of-managers for 44 product managers and engineers in Ireland, France, and India.
• Ecosystem: Established long-term funded research projects with Stanford University and ETH. 

Sr. Director, Imagineering, Emerging Solutions 7/2006-6/2009

Created a new Operational Business Intelligence product based on Complex Event Processing.

• Innovation: In 50% of the time and cost, achieved 3X faster performance, successfully completed 10 customer projects, and collaborated with 13 internal product groups. 3 patents granted.
• Leadership: Managed a team of 15 software engineers in Latvia. 
• Awards: MVP 2009 (employee of the year) award and High Potential designation.

CenterBoard Pleasanton, California

Founder & Chief Technology Officer 1/2003-7/2005

Venture-financed start-up in the Enterprise Information Integration space.

• Funding: Raised $12M in A & B rounds from Woodside Fund, Bay Partners, and Siemens Venture Capital. 
• Innovation: Launched a new federated operational data store product that achieved a 5X greater Time-to-Value, 10X faster performance, and ROI in 6 months with customers. 
• Ecosystem: Established strong partnership with SAP for the supply chain market. 

Siemens Technology-To-Business Center Berkeley, California

Technology Innovator 6/1999-1/2003

Innovation leader in the data management technology space and the logistics and supply chain markets.

• Funding: Raised $2.5M internal funding
• Innovation: Created new federated operational data store product where data is extracted from the sources in real time to satisfy the query. 3 patents granted.
• Ecosystem: Partnered with Siemens Dematic and Manhattan Associates. 

Rutgers University

Ph.D., Computer Science

Rutgers University

M.S., Computer Science The Johns Hopkins University

B.S., Computer Science