Meet Elisa Prajogo, our Chief Product Officer: Managing a Winning Product Experience
Tech startups rely on the Product team to determine and deliver the solutions needed to address user needs and build a sustainable business. The role of the product team itself differs greatly depending on the business and organization structure.
In GudangAda, the product organization encompasses Product Management, Product Research, Product Design, Business Process Management, Product Analytics, and Product Support teams. Each role serves a specific function, and together we ensure we are building the right products to address the needs of B2B users.
Elisa’s early time in GudangAda
In the short 3 years since GudangAda was founded, the team has launched multiple product lines spread across the ecosystem. It started with a B2B marketplace complete with an in-house payments platform. To complete our marketplace offering, we built management systems for GudangAda Logistics Transport & Warehouse businesses, which includes a drivers app. Most recently, the team has launched GudangSolusi, a store management application for FMCG general trade.
The largest challenge in building GudangAda products is the fact that general trade markets in Indonesia are centuries old, which means it is a well-established complex ecosystem with a variety of business models. Furthermore, owners tend to be of an older demographic and less tech-savvy. This results in a challenge where we must build features that support the existing processes while ensuring that the user interfaces are simple and easy to use.
The very first product we built in GudangAda is our marketplace app & website. It was an important rebuild to ensure that the marketplace can scale with quality, and we had to ensure the build was done in a short time since we froze development on the previous marketplace during this build. The entire ecosystem, including payments took five months with a very small team while onboarding a new team member every week during the strictest covid lockdowns in mid-2020.
Life as a product engineer in GudangAda
To handle this dynamic business world, it is critical to create a competent profile in order to begin progress in product development. This is where companies require another C-level executive, a Chief Product Officer (CPO), to facilitate business growth.
CPOs are product experts with advanced knowledge of how to improve product performance. They are customer-focused, technologically savvy, and, most importantly, make sound product decisions. Now please meet our CPO at GudangAda, Elisa Prajogo!
Elisa joined GudangAda as VP Product in 2020. She was then promoted to SVP Product before being appointed CPO in April 2022, enticed by the opportunity to make an impact on the general trade market in Indonesia. Having spent 10+ years honing her craft in technology, both in Indonesia and abroad, Elisa was drawn by Stevensang (GudangAda Founder & CEO) and the team’s unparalleled relationship and understanding of the market.
Elisa began her career in high school, working part-time as an IT staff at her school. Then, she began her professional career through the six internship programs required by the University of Waterloo in Canada, where she majored in Systems Design Engineering. She used the internships as a way to try out different specializations: from mechanical engineering, building design, software engineering, to business roles within technology organizations. Through these internships, she learned that she works best when work is a mix of business and technical.
Upon graduation, she worked for Ericsson Canada as a Program Manager, before moving back to Indonesia and transitioning to the product management role at one of the biggest Indonesian startup businesses. It was the first time she fell in love with product management. The combination of being able to create impact at scale and figuring out how to manage and grow a team with diverse backgrounds is what motivates her to grow her career further.
Her focus since joining GudangAda has always been to build a great product team, knowing that there is no way she could deliver the GudangAda vision without a team that is equally committed to transforming the traditional B2B commerce space. She is aware that a strong product team can create a product strategy that enables the product to be tailored over time to meet the demands of the company, gaining speed along the way and strengthening the system as we advance.
The product team members at GudangAda work alongside product and engineering leaders from renowned global and Indonesian companies, as well as FMCG and logistics experts with decades of experience under their belt. In building the team, Elisa ensures the team only hire the best talents:team players and have the passion and hunger to grow together while learning more about the FMCG and logistics industry.
Balancing a demanding career and early motherhood
Being a woman in the male-dominated technology industry never made Elisa feel out of place. She is starkly aware that this is a privilege provided by the women who have broken the barriers ahead of her time.
It was not until Q3 2021, when Elisa gave birth to a baby girl, that she felt the additional load women carry beyond their careers. Although she is used to managing a lot of context at work, motherhood carries an unlimited context to absorb: : when the baby was last fed, when the baby should sleep, how to introduce solids, how to set up the environment so she can develop well, down to which and how many diapers to buy.
Maternity leave was not the 3-month break that she’s always thought it was, and it took some time to adjust to the additional load. The prioritization skill learned in her daily work is now critical to her personal life as well. While personal life has always taken a backseat to her career, she had to make personal life a priority during this stage of her life.
She has found that the key to surviving early postpartum is not only to have a village to guide her through early motherhood, but also a village of colleagues to ensure that things run smoothly during her absence. After nearly a year, she is glad that things have (mostly) settled with balancing parenthood and a demanding career. She strives to build an organization that can adapt to each members’ shifting priorities so that each member can also balance their personal and professional growth.
