Lloyd Keays
What I Bring to Product Strategy
I bridge technical capability and business value in enterprise procurement. 20 years architecting SAP solutions—from identifying market opportunities to shaping product roadmaps, collaborating with engineering teams, and driving measurable adoption. I translate complex AI advancements into scalable product features while managing dependencies across platforms, domains, and global stakeholders.
Product Strategy & Vision
I define product direction by identifying high-impact opportunities, building strategic roadmaps, and aligning technical capability with market needs. My approach combines deep domain expertise with the ability to spot emerging technology potential before it becomes obvious.
Opportunity Identification & Discovery
Recognized ChatGPT's enterprise potential 9 days after release—created SAP's first training program. Identified blockchain opportunities that led to SAP Crypto North Star framework (2022). Track emerging AI tools (Perplexity AI, Manus AI, Comet browser) and assess their application to procurement workflows.
Your product gets: Early identification of high-impact capabilities before competitors.
Cross-Application AI Strategy
Coordinated SAP Crypto North Star advisory framework across procurement and supply chain product lines—providing board-level recommendations on technology adoption. Experience working across SAP's platform ecosystem including trading partner networks processing $14B daily.
Your product gets: Cohesive AI strategy that connects multiple domains through shared intelligence and orchestration.
Market Alignment & Differentiation
Promoted cloud-first solutions at executive level when SAP had no cloud offerings—shaped product positioning that became standard. Created frameworks and narratives that sales teams adopted globally. Built SAP's #2 highest-rated course (13,000+ learners) demonstrating market-aligned education.
Your product gets: Clear differentiation story and go-to-market strategy grounded in customer needs.
Platform Integration Expertise
Experience architecting solutions across SAP's ecosystem—integration strategies for trading partner networks, B2B commerce platforms, and cross-application workflows. Built frameworks adopted across multiple product domains ensuring consistency and interoperability.
Your product gets: Integration architecture that ensures consistency with platform services like Joule, Knowledge Graph, and Business Data Cloud.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
I excel at managing complex stakeholder relationships and driving alignment across engineering, UX, platform teams, and business units. My experience spans global distributed teams, executive stakeholders, and technical partners.
Engineering & Data Science Partnership
Won Gen AI Hackathon by collaborating with engineering to build production-ready AI tool—13,000 on-brand assets created in 2 weeks. Partnered with data teams to train custom image models and integrate ChatGPT capabilities. Technical fluency in LLMs, retrieval, and grounding without hands-on coding.
Result: AI features that ship and users adopt.
Global Stakeholder Management
As Global Head of Pre-Sales, managed alignment across 200+ solution advisors in 40 countries. Coordinated Crypto North Star framework across multiple SAP product lines. Delivered executive briefings that influenced strategic product decisions at board level.
Result: Complex initiatives that achieve buy-in and execute successfully.
UX & Customer Experience
Created frameworks that became teaching standards—metro map analogy for SAP now used in global onboarding. Built demos that became sales standards (291K+ views, 9 years sustained relevance). Led design thinking sessions that resulted in product features like carbon footprint tracking.
Result: User experiences that are both technically sound and intuitively understandable.
Product Marketing Alignment
Created content used by global sales teams—YouTube channel with 880K+ views, courses integrated into worldwide onboarding. Delivered keynotes that Chief Procurement Officers requested for their entire teams. Translate technical vision into customer value stories that win deals.
Result: Product positioning that resonates with customers and drives adoption.
Execution & Measurable Impact
I deliver results through metrics-driven decision making, rapid iteration, and a bias toward action. My track record shows the ability to move from strategy to shipped features that customers use.
Defining Success Metrics & KPIs
Established adoption metrics for AI enablement—tracked 20,000+ employee engagement through workshops, measured 13,000 asset creations in 2 weeks. Built SAP's #2 highest-rated course with completion and satisfaction tracking. Demos maintained 6,000 annual views over 9 years—evidence of sustained value.
Your approach: Data-driven product decisions with clear success criteria.
Rapid Prototyping & Testing
Created SAP's first ChatGPT training 9 days after release—validated market need through immediate adoption. Won hackathon with production-ready tool that scaled to 13,000 users in 2 weeks. Track and demo emerging tools the moment they're available (Comet browser, Manus AI).
Your approach: Fast cycle times from idea to validated feature.
Managing Dependencies & Delivery
Coordinated Crypto North Star framework across multiple product lines and stakeholder groups. Facilitated transition of 100+ solution engineers while maintaining sales performance. Built product communities and frameworks that scaled globally without direct management.
Your approach: Complex coordination that delivers on schedule.
Customer-Facing Validation
20 years customer-facing experience architecting solutions for enterprises like Nestlé, Heineken, L'Oréal Asia. Delivered keynotes globally—so impactful that CPOs requested repeat presentations. Built content with 880K+ views proving customer resonance.
Your approach: Product features validated against real customer pain points.
Product Philosophy
Start with the outcome: Always begin with the business value, then explain the technical path. Users need to see where they're going before they'll adopt the solution.
Make the complex simple: The power of AI is not in the response but in the conversation. The same applies to product design—technology should feel intuitive, not overwhelming.
Ship and iterate: Perfect is the enemy of shipped. Build minimum viable features, measure adoption, learn, and improve. My hackathon win became production standard because we focused on solving one problem well.
Build for scale: Frameworks and standards matter more than individual features. Create reusable patterns that teams can adopt (see: "Lloyd's bag of tricks" still getting 1,000 monthly hits years later).
Technical Fluency (Non-Coding)
AI & ML Understanding
- LLMs, retrieval, grounding, and prompt engineering
- Image generation models and LoRA training (used in hackathon win)
- AI agents and workflow orchestration concepts
- Practical experience with ChatGPT, Perplexity, Stable Diffusion, Claude
Platform & Integration
- Enterprise platform architecture (SAP ecosystem)
- API design and integration patterns
- Trading partner networks and B2B connectivity ($14B/day scale)
- Cloud-first architecture and SaaS product design
Data & Analytics
- Defining data quality requirements for ML/AI features
- Building ground-truth datasets for model training
- Quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods
- Metrics-driven product decisions
Content Production (Bonus)
- Video production: Camtasia, Adobe Premiere
- Visual design: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign
- Prototyping: Vibe coding for rapid UI concepts
- Used for creating product demos and customer-facing materials
Let's Discuss Your Product Challenges
Whether you need someone to define AI product strategy across procurement domains, collaborate with engineering to ship production features, or bridge technical capability with market needs—let's explore how my experience can accelerate your roadmap.
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linkedin.com/in/keays
Rotterdam, Netherlands
(global availability)