KETAN RAMCHANDRA KADU

Product Owner with over 18+ years of experience, including 4+ years in Product Management and other 14+ years at Springer Nature across publishing and technology platforms and and prior experience in the healthcare domain. IT professional with experience in product ownership, business analysis, scrum master, agile coach, transition manager, project coordinator and SME by supporting software development deliveries for publishing and technology platforms, making me well-suited for this role.

My key strengths include:

• Extensive experience as a Product Owner, adeptly managing product backlogs, prioritizing features, and ensuring alignment with business strategy and vision adopting OKRs or KPIs processes.
• Proficiency in Agile methodologies, Certified Scrum Product Owner, skilled in facilitating Scrum ceremonies and fostering collaboration across cross-functional teams.
• Expertise in managing cross functional teams, and executing large-scale projects from concept to launch, requirements gathering, and helping BAs to define acceptance criteria.
• Strong analytical and communication skills, with a focus on customer satisfaction and product innovation.
• My experience includes contributing towards product management for AI and Machine Learning services to get the efficiency gain at submission process

· Product Lifecycle Management: Product Strategy & Roadmap

· Backlog Ownership & Prioritization (with different techniques e.g. OKRs, MoSCoW etc.)

· Problem Solving and Data-driven Decision Making

· Stakeholder & Executive Management

· Market Research & Competitive Analysis

· Product Launch & Go- to Market Strategies

· Leadership, Team Collaboration and Mentoring (cross functional or internal)

· Customer Focus Strategies

· Workshop Facilitations & Presentation

· Platform & API-based Products

· AI / ML-enabled Solutions

· Agile & SAFe Delivery

· User Centered Design and UX/UI development

Product Management Certification, IBM

ACDC – Value Added Services

Product Owner | AI‑Driven Content Automation

• Led development of AI‑powered manuscript screening solutions reducing editorial effort by 15–20 minutes per article, boosting operational efficiency across JEOAs, EAs, and Editors.
• Enhanced research integrity workflows by enabling early detection of misconduct patterns, including sanctioned authors, retracted references, duplicate images, and unethical study indicators.
• Delivered automation that improved CSSL productivity by ~2.5 hours/day, accelerating decision-making and reducing manual checks.
• Designed plug‑and‑play VAS modules compatible with multiple submission systems, improving scalability and adoption.
• Reduced publication delays by enabling structured content generation to fast‑track submissions and online publishing.

Content API

Product Owner | Integrated Content Delivery and Automation

• Launched a unified REST-based Content API enabling access to structured XML/HTML, completeness checks, and near real‑time metadata transfer.
• Improved preprint QC efficiency at Research Square (Pre-Print), saving ~10 minutes per article and supporting strcutured conversion of direct preprint submissions which needs to delivered in 24–48 hour.
• Delivered consolidated structured HTML for SNAPP, saving ~2 minutes per article for Editorial, Reviewer, and Transfer Desk teams.

Real-Time Metadata Extraction

Product Owner | Submission Automation & Author Experience

• Improved metadata extraction accuracy from ~80% to ~87%, targeting 90% for standardized manuscript formats.
• Reduced extraction processing time from ~5s to ~3s (current: 2.8s), enhancing author experience and reducing submission friction.
• Automated extraction of author names, affiliations, titles, and abstracts, minimizing manual entry errors.

Proofing: Proof Editor / eProofing (Journals & Books)

Product Owner | Modernized Proofing Experience

• Increased eProofing adoption for Journals from ~90% to ~93% and Books from ~85% to ~90%.
• Enhanced CSAT from ~90% to ~93% by delivering faster, modern proofing workflows and more accurate author corrections.
• Shortened proofing cycles through automation and improved usability.

 eAuthoring

Product Owner | Book Workflow Modernization

• Streamlined edition book production by eliminating manual conversion steps.
• Increased adoption from 84 to 100 titles, directly reducing vendor conversion costs.
• Enabled seamless reuse and restructuring of previous edition files, ensuring structurally valid outputs for downstream processing.

 ACDC X (SN JPE)

Product Owner | Unified Journal Production Platform

• Delivered a scalable production platform processing ~200K articles.
• Reduced production turnaround time from 22 days → 19 days through content automation and redundancy elimination.
• Achieved ~40% vendor cost savings while improving output consistency and quality.

 Article in Press (AIP)

Product Owner | Accelerated Early Access Publishing

• Launched AIP to publish accepted typeset versions within days, accelerating dissemination for Nature and other high‑impact journals.
• Significantly reduced time‑to‑publish for accepted manuscripts, increasing researcher visibility and citation potential.

Content Editor

Product Owner | Unified Correction and XML Production Tool

• Drove adoption among correction teams from ~70% to ~95% (target 2026).
• Enabled intuitive online correction workflows across production stages.
• Delivered A++ compliant XML ready for PDF and online publication, reducing errors and correction cycles.

• Recognized for delivering multiple high-impact automation, process optimization and AI initiatives.
• SME for publishing domain across the organization.
• Contributor to cross-publisher collaboration initiatives.
• Awarded for leadership, facilitation, training, and innovation.
• Part of Springer Nature, Pune corporate cricket team.