Meet the Team

About

As Senior Director of Product Management for PenChecks, Ron Kaplan’s primary responsibilities include product management, managing product teams, driving product innovation/strategy, and implementing best practices to increase revenue growth. He also plays a key role in implementing processes that increase product performance and customer adoption to new products and services. Kaplan’s diverse background includes working as Director, Product Manager for Jack Henry™, a technology provider serving regional financial institutions; Norman ASA, which produces next-generation products for discovery and forensics of malicious software; and EdgeWave, a computer security company specializing in email and web security. Kaplan graduated from St. John’s College with a BA in Liberal Arts and an MBA in Marketing from National University, where he was awarded membership in the National Honors Society – Management Business Administration – by Sigma Beta Delta.

Executive Profile

Ron Kaplan likes thinking outside of the box, finding solutions to tough problems, making strategic decisions, and driving organizational change. Throughout his career, he has put those inclinations to good work as a product management leader for a variety of companies in the financial services, information security, and other B2B spaces. All of which puts him right at home with PenChecks and its ambitious growth goals within the financial services industry.

“I signed on with PenChecks for several reasons,” says Ron. “PenChecks struck me as an evolving FinTech company whose significant growth objectives will be achieved by applying a disciplined product-driven approach. I am impressed with the company’s leadership and their vision for the future. And I look forward to mentoring their growing product team by introducing a product lifecycle management process and other key factors in the growth of a business.”

Creating Meaningful Change

Ron brings decades of leadership in product management and B2B marketing to the PenChecks team. Sharing his knowledge and expertise about product lifecycle management – how we make decisions, set priorities, develop products and services, implement, support and maintain those solutions, and the ways that clients adopt them – will play a vital role in helping senior leadership make the strategic decisions at the right time and ensure the best outcomes.

Ron sees the process of developing a powerful product strategy as a foundation of the company’s success, however abstract that concept may be.

“Too often, people and teams jump into designing a solution too soon without generating a consensus around the problem,” he says. “When people agree on the problem, they can agree on the success factors needed to solve that problem. Product managers are tasked with building relationships in cross-functional teams with myriad stakeholders. The specific steps to achieve what is set out to do in the strategy drive product management to make those connections.”

“I have managed four #1 products from three different industries. My plan is to keep doing that at PenChecks!” he adds.

Music and Family

Ron and his wife raised two wonderful kids who are attending college. The family has always enjoyed taking vacations visiting international and domestic destinations. Camera in hand, Ron captured the cultures and sites from cities and nature. Ron’s current goal is to attend all those concerts he missed over the past few decades. 

Best piece of advice ever received: If you’re forcing it, you’re doing it wrong.

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