The Challenge

PLT's digital revenue engine was failing: legacy batch processing across critical product feeds was creating 6–8 hour delays, triggering cascading failures across Google Shopping, Meta, Snapchat, and Verbolia. With account suspension warnings escalating and £7.8M+ monthly ad revenue at immediate risk, the business needed rapid, sophisticated intervention across multiple backend systems simultaneously.

My Role

As Product Owner for PLT’s backend integration portfolio, I led the critical Intelligent Reach API transformation while simultaneously orchestrating 5+ parallel initiatives including Bloomreach, TikTok Shop, Split Shipping, Marketplace expansion, and ongoing BAU. This required complex resource allocation and risk prioritisation across multiple, business-critical workstreams.

Strategic Investment & Executive Alignment

• Secured £40k emergency investment: Presented business case to Director and COO, articulating systemic risk across PLT's digital advertising ecosystem and securing immediate strategic funding approval.

• Orchestrated cross-portfolio prioritisation: Led strategic planning sessions across 8+ teams, reallocating engineering resources from lower-priority initiatives to focus on revenue-critical IR API delivery.

• Architected stakeholder ecosystem: Mapped complex interdependencies between concurrent projects (Bloomreach & TikTok) to ensure IR delivery wouldn't compromise parallel business-critical initiatives.

Technical Leadership & Portfolio Coordination

• Delivered transformational API integration: Spearheaded migration from legacy batch architecture to real-time API feeds, achieving 95%+ latency reduction (6-8 hours to <15 minutes) while maintaining zero downtime across all advertising channels.

• Engineered cutover strategy: Designed phased rollout methodology with comprehensive data validation, partner notification protocols, and fail-safe rollback procedures, operationalised through Excel tracking system for real-time progress monitoring.

• Optimised portfolio delivery cadence: Managed weekly sprint planning across multiple backend services, strategically sequencing releases to maximise business value while minimising technical debt and integration conflicts.

• Drove hands-on product enhancement: Scoped and delivered tactical improvements (available sizes data fields, feed timing optimisation, stock mismatch resolution) to strengthen competitive positioning.

• Post live owned BAU triage and ongoing compliance, led post-implementation reviews to optimise future API projects.

Results

• Protected £7.8M+ in monthly ad revenue by enabling real-time feed updates and eliminating critical account suspension risks.

• Increased campaign agility, marketing could launch new products and promotions instantly, with 99% reduction in OOS/price mismatch complaints.

• Delivered strong ROI: £40k investment protecting £7.8M monthly revenue stream with immediate operational improvements.

• Reduced manual incident triage for PPC and IT teams, freeing up strategic capacity for growth initiatives.

• Improved ad campaign reliability and customer experience by resolving pricing and stock availability errors faster.

Key Learnings

• Executive alignment is crucial: Securing Director and COO buy-in early enabled faster resource allocation and cross-team prioritisation.

• Comprehensive stakeholder engagement and dependency mapping were critical to avoiding scope gaps and ensuring smooth delivery.

• Risk-first planning pays dividends: Detailed cutover strategy with rollback procedures prevented revenue loss during migration.

• Active cross-team coordination and transparent documentation kept delivery on track through multiple resourcing challenges and parallel project conflicts.