We caught up with our Product Manager, Yulia Lamonova, to learn more about her expertise, impressive educational background, and what she sees as the most challenging obstacle for the AI industry…
What is your main ambition you want to achieve in your role as Product Manager at FYLD?
When you boil it down, I believe, at its core, FYLD help users make better decisions. We enable anyone using the platform to make safer, smarter and more productive choices while at work which is an inspiring reason to wake up every day.
I look forward to continuing to develop our capabilities, from capturing and analysing data, to making safety and productivity predictions and smart suggestions to our users. We are looking to expand to more use cases and new user personas to help our customers unlock more benefits with FYLD.
How does your previous studies, both your degree in sociology and MBA, inform your day-to-day role at FYLD?
My sociology degree nurtured my internal curiosity about how groups, communities and whole societies function. It also equipped me with the research tools to uncover the reasons behind human behaviour. As a product manager at FYLD, I apply these tools in my day-to-day work because being able to understand the user problem deeply is at the heart of building a successful product.
My MBA and previous work experience enabled me to develop commercial acumen, which is another equally important competency of a product manager. Strong products not only solve the most important user problems – but also deliver business value.
So, my degrees help me confidently wear – and switch between – multiple hats: end-user, customer decision-maker and commercial ones. And my work experience across start-ups and large corporates gives me an appreciation of both worlds and helps me bridge FYLD’s fast-paced, iterative culture with expectations of our enterprise customers.
What excites you most about your job and the industry you work in?
I’m a builder at heart. I like the process of taking a user problem, getting to the bottom of it and then discovering and delivering the solution to the user’s hands – and then monitoring how more and more users are trying the platform, and keep returning to it.
Having a tangible output, making fieldworker’s life easier, is the most rewarding part of my job. What makes this special at FYLD is having rich layers of data, which we convert into actionable insights, continuously improving user experience.
It is so exciting to be involved with AI and data within FYLD. During my MBA studies, I knew I wanted to combine my passions for product management and working with data. FYLD provides the perfect combination.
What, in your opinion, are the biggest challenges that the digital transformation and AI industries face?
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about AI is the expectation that it will make all the decisions for the human. AI is a smart assistant, like a digital buddy, but the ultimate decision-making stays with humans, at least in the context of safety in the field. So, when working with an AI product, it’s important to set and continuously manage the right expectations.
Another challenge is change management. Naturally, we humans prefer status quo and are not very keen to change. So digital transformation is always hard by definition. I’m proud of how at FYLD we combine the industry expertise of our customer team and data-powered insights to support our customers in transforming their businesses with FYLD.
Why do you think the innovative technology FYLD has developed is key to transforming safety and productivity?
The unique selling point for FYLD is the data underpinning it. If a product is just a digital paper, staying, in essence, the same old tick-box exercise, it won’t make a significant difference in the long run. It’s not what we’re striving for.
At FYLD we’re working to make the data collected empower our users with safety and productivity predictions and smart intervention suggestions, designed to help our customers unlock more benefits with the platform. And I’m proud and excited to be on this journey with FYLD.
Did you know that FYLD recently won Innovator of the Year and Best Digital Innovation Awards at the Energy Innovation Awards 2022? Check out our blog here to discover more.