Plamena Mechkarova

Product Owner @Qualifacts

✔️ ITBusiness Owner👍 Sales & BizDev🧨 Consulting🏦 Finance✨ Business OwnerProduct ManagerProject ManagerBusiness AnalystData Analyst

Qualifacts is a leading provider of Electronic Health Records (EHR) for the behavioral health and human services market. As a product owner, Plamena Mechkarova is responsible for defining product vision, working closely with stakeholders to understand their needs, and managing the product backlog. She acts as a liaison between the technical team and the business side, ensuring that the product meets the company's strategic goals and customer expectations. Recently, Plamena has been focusing on enhancing the functionality and user experience of the EHR system to provide better service to healthcare providers and ultimately improve patient care.

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Work Background

QualifactsProduct Owner

Sep. 2021United States• Led new product development market expansion in CA, TX, VT, UT and NY, achieving $1 mill in Monthly Recuring Revenue. • Lead multi-national teams through the product development lifecycle from concept creation to launch within a fast-paced SaaS company. • Product roadmap management: Creating and prioritization of the billing team product roadmap, communicating key project commitments, plans, changes and requirements to teams and management. • Requirement management: requirements gathering, user story/acceptance criteria writing, stakeholder communication, user analytics, support tickets and dialogue/review with C-level leaders. • Release management: UAT testing, release note creation, training materials and beta testing for new/enhanced customer-facing experiences based on user input and discussions. Planning the release of project deliverables. Managing risks that may affect release scope. Ensuring releases stay within budgets and requirements. providing weekly updates on release activities. identifying any project dependencies that could alter the course of release. collecting feedback from different teams and customers for review • Communication management: key project commitments, plans, changes and requirements to teams and training documentation. •Led projects involving customizing X12 files (inbound, outbound, and remittance) to comply with evolving Medicaid and Medicare regulations and claim requirements. Designed and implemented custom client liability modules tailored to state-specific regulations, ensuring accurate and compliant billing. Managed additional software modifications driven by client or market-specific needs, enhancing overall system functionality and client satisfaction. Strengthening the system to improve Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) workflows, optimizing operational efficiency and compliance. • Organize and run user groups to inform the ideation and discovery phase for major software enhancement projects

Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)CSM & SR. BA

Mar. 2015 - Oct. 2021Washington D.C. • Facilitated daily scrum, sprint demos, sprint retrospectives, sprint planning. • Created project cadence, team charters and established project success metrics. • Oversaw defect triage sessions, helping with understanding and prioritization of outstanding defects to actively manage and minimize scope creep. • Managed release planning and release executions. • Actively facilitated and participated in project estimations for budget preparations and project calibrations. • Developed resource availability calculation tool, which resulted in greater efficiency for sprint planning and forecasting purposes. • Lead and accomplished projects pertaining to Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), Electronic Residency Application Service(ERAS), Post Baccalaureate Premedical Programs, Summer Health Professions Education program, Careers in Medicine platform, platform - re-platforming, process improvements, and re-engineering. • Supported heuristic/ usability study for Medical Schools Admissions Requirements(MSAR). • Facilitated RFP process as part of test delivery vendor change initiative and managed as-is and to be business processes mapping and analysis in preparation for vendor change. • Documented and prioritized requirements using requirements and knowledge management tools such as JIRA and Confluence. • Pioneered the knowledge exchange portal for the entire Applications Cluster. • Drove improvements to existing functionality by analyzing requirements via user stories, acceptance criteria, storyboards and low-fidelity prototypes and user acceptance testing. • Interfaced with business partners to ensure customer vision, needs, requirements and specifications clearly understood to exceed expectations and attained high satisfaction.

mindSHIFT, a Ricoh companyBusiness Modeling Analyst

Oct. 2014 - Feb. 2015Sterling, VA• Headed research, design, development and implementation of advanced IT service offerings for customers. • Researched pricing strategies based on market factors and profitability targets; collaborated cross-functionally with department managers in regional operations, product development, sales, IS development and engineering. • Coordinated with Director of Product Engineering to transform business vision into technical requirements; organized requirements brainstorming sessions and documented business cases. • Led new product initiation, documenting features/requirements gathering process, AS-IS product pricing analysis, and pioneered the TCO server infrastructure model, enabling clients to compare cost benefits of on prem vs. cloud infrastructure. • Uncovered, studied potential market opportunities leading to product line expansion and overall growth. • Created complex business and financial modeling in support of wide variety of initiatives from customer and market analysis to evaluating product and go to market strategies.

MicroStrategyLead IT Business Analyst

Feb. 2011 - Aug. 2014Vienna, VA• Gathered requirements using interviews, document analysis, requirements workshops, business process descriptions, use cases, scenarios, business analysis, task and workflow analysis. • Collaborated with external and internal customers to analyze information needs and functional requirements and deliver following artifacts: functional requirements and business requirements document. • Define requirements specifications in line with standard templates, using natural language. • Conducted cost benefit analysis along with cost and vendor management worldwide (infrastructure and telecom) for the procurement of more cost-effective products for the organization worldwide. • Compiled IT budget by facilitation supporting meetings and documentation gathering in preparation for board review and budget approvals. • Led the presentation of the IT budget during the board review. • Elicited requirements using interviews, document analysis, requirements workshops, business process mapping , use cases, data, task and workflow documents. • Successfully manage BA team of three • Facilitates vendor negotiations and contract review sessions as well as completed contract documentation processing and contract onboarding. • Initiated developer and subject matter experts’ collaborations to establish the technical vision and analyze trade-offs between usability and performance needs • Played a liaison role between the business units, technology teams and support teams

Blackboard Inc / Presidium IncBusiness Operations Analyst

Aug. 2006 - Feb. 2011Reston, VA• Work closely with Finance to identify forecasting and budgeting processes improvements such as cycle time, accuracy, or automation, cost analysis and cost savings strategy • Provide Business Process Mapping, Process Analysis, and Process Improvement • Develop, Maintain, and Support tools and reports that provide better and more timely insight into our data • Performed extensive research on variety of software products which later were adopted by the company; also, remained actively involved in the implementation process and provided ongoing support • Assisted in overseeing projects for almost all departments of the company (sales, account management, operations, finance, etc.) • Support the company-wide forecasting process and associated management reporting • In charge of number of projects such as updating the corporate phone routing; management of the global address list; client data audit and file reconciliation • In charge of weekly sales analysis through the company’s CRM – salesforce.com, through variety of standard and custom reports; overview of quarterly initial bookings and renewals, client health status and sales and account manager’s weekly performance • Play key role in planning and coordination of annual conferences, to include monitoring the events’ budgets to decrease excessive expenditures • Prepare corporate financial reports and assist with reviewing vendor service contracts for the CFO • Main point of contact for all vendor and partner communications, vendor management, and contract negotiations • Research and resolve accounting invoice discrepancies • Reconciled payment issues with vendors • Proactive initiation toward reconciliation and price negotiation of vendor contracts • Worked directly with CEO, COO, Managing Director, CFO, and VP of Sales to manage corporate level and internal business affairs while maintaining confidentiality

Presidium Inc.IT Help Desk Representative

Aug. 2006 - Feb. 2007Reston, VA• Provided tier 1 & 2 Information technology help desk support for more than 700 Higher Education institutions via phone, email and ticketing system • Identified and documented standard help desk procedures. • Diagnosed and resolved tier I and tier II technical service requests. Maintained a 95% first call resolution rate on tier I support and 90% resolution rate on tier II support • Diagnosed and resolved technical hardware and software issues • Escalate issues to appropriate department experts • Systems supported: LMS: Blackboard, WebEx, Wimba, Angel etc. ERP: Peoplesoft, Banner and several homegrown Email : Exchange, webmail and homegrown email systems OS: Windows 2003, 2007, Windows 7, MAC OS • Network/ Internet access issues • Installation and configuration of printers, faxes and other peripheral devices • Mobile device general support and configuration • Active Directory Tear1 support

Northern Virginia Community CollegeITHD

Jan. 2005 - Jun. 2006Annandale, VA• Provided tier 1 & 2 Information technology help desk support for more than 700 Higher Education institutions via phone, email and ticketing system • Identified and document standard help desk procedures. • Diagnose and resolve tier I and tier II level technical service requests. Maintained a 95% resolution rate on tier I desk and 90% resolution rate on tier II desk • Diagnose and resolve technical hardware and software issues • Escalate issues to appropriate department experts • Systems supported: LMS: Blackboard ERP: Peoplesoft Email : Exchange • Network/ Internet access issues • Mapping network devices such as printers, scanners, and other network devices. • Mobile device general support • Active Directory support • Stay current with system information, changes and updates