The single accountable person
End-to-end ownership of the Zoho One platform for a construction engineering consultancy — CRM, Books, Creator, Campaigns, Analytics, and PageSense. Responsible for system usability, data quality, GDPR compliance, automation strategy, and the integrations that tie it all together. This is the project where I stopped operating adjacent to product ownership and started doing it outright.
The context
Nitra+ is a construction engineering consultancy based in Belgium, offering building inspections, safety coordination, prevention consulting, EPB reporting, and demolition oversight. They also run Nitra Academy, a BeSaCC-VCA recognized examination center for workplace safety training. When I came on board, their customer data lived in disconnected tools, manual spreadsheets, and people's heads. There was no single source of truth for contacts, no structured sales pipeline, and no automation to speak of. Marketing, sales, and operations were all working from different versions of reality.
The CEO, Kris Wauters, knew they needed a system — but didn't have the internal expertise to evaluate platforms, define requirements, or drive implementation. That's where I came in.
What I own
Everything. I own the entire Zoho One installation — not just the CRM, but the full stack: Books (with a data handoff pipeline to their accountant), Creator (the Academy platform), Campaigns, Analytics, and PageSense. I also built a sync between Zoho and their external project management system to eliminate duplicate data entry. I'm the single person accountable for:
- System usability — every tool in the stack has to work for people who aren't technical
- Data quality & ETL pipelines — deduplication, enrichment from governmental sources (VAT-based financial insights, invoicing details), validation rules, and data pipelines that keep everything clean and reliable
- GDPR compliance — consent management, data retention policies, and processing agreements
- Automation strategy — lead routing, follow-up sequences, marketing campaigns, and integration between Zoho apps and external systems
- Ongoing evolution — the platform isn't "done" — it evolves with the business, and I own that roadmap
This isn't a project I delivered and handed off. It's a product I own and continue to steward — making strategic decisions about what to build next, what to deprecate, and how to keep the system aligned with business goals as they shift.
The approach
I started with the data model — understanding which entities (contacts, companies, deals, activities) needed to exist and how they related to each other across Nitra's different business units. Getting this right was critical because every automation, report, and workflow downstream depends on clean, well-structured data.
From there, I built outward: CRM configuration, pipeline design, automation workflows, marketing integrations, and reporting dashboards. Each decision involved trade-offs between complexity and usability — a system that does everything but nobody uses is worse than a simple system that people actually adopt.
GDPR compliance wasn't bolted on — it was designed into the data architecture from day one. Consent tracking, retention schedules, and processing agreements are built into the system's DNA, not managed in a separate spreadsheet.
Strategic decisions
Part of owning a product is making decisions that shape its direction. Some of the key calls I've made:
- Chose Zoho One over Salesforce and HubSpot — right fit for the organisation's size and budget, with CRM, Books, Campaigns, Analytics, and Creator under one roof
- Built data enrichment pipelines that pull financial insights and correct invoicing details from governmental sources based on VAT ID — no manual lookup needed
- Built an ETL sync between Zoho and their external project management system to eliminate duplicate data entry across teams
- Set up the Books-to-accountant data handoff so financial data flows cleanly without manual exports
- Designed a phased rollout rather than a big-bang migration — reducing risk and building internal buy-in
Design meets code
My Interaction Design degree gave me a technical foundation that most designers don't have — I can read code, understand data models, and think in systems. With AI tools, that foundation now compounds. I make design-driven changes directly in code, build ETL pipelines, and ship product updates without sitting through hours of handoff meetings. That makes me significantly faster as a product owner.
What I learned
The hardest part of product ownership isn't the building — it's the ongoing stewardship. Anyone can ship a v1. The real test is whether you can keep a product healthy as the business evolves, users change their workflows, and new requirements emerge. That requires equal parts strategic thinking and operational discipline.
I also learned that compliance (GDPR, data governance) is a product feature, not a checkbox. When you build it into the architecture, it becomes invisible to users. When you bolt it on, it becomes everyone's least favorite part of the system.