Finance Director

• Jul 2019 - Present

Head of Commercial & Operational Finance

• 2015 - 2018

Responsible for leading the commercial and operational finance team at the Groups Merseyside distillation and bottling facility. Business partnering with the commercial sales and marketing teams to drive improvements in margin and financial performance from NPD, brand extensions and a consistent pricing and promotional strategy . The team also partner a complex operational site with major CAPEX and efficiency improvement programmes and improve the understanding of cost drivers and variances. The team also work closely ensuring operations and commercial have all the information to ensure joined up thinking to improve decision making resulting in improved performance and increased profits.Major Achievements In Role:Designed and Implemented an efficient and flexible forecasting model for the commercial sales teams to take full P&L ownership for their customers and brands clearly identify risks and opportunities resulting in budgeted net margins being delivered in its first year of use.

International Financial Controller

• 2012 - 2015

Senior Finance member of the International's Divisional Management Team attending QBR's at its International Business Units (IBU's) reviewing performance, plans and investments decisions ensuring divisional strategy achieved.• Drove an accurate and timely reporting and forecasting culture across the IBU's.• Financial representation of the IBU's into UK Group/Finance Director/PLC Board.• Developed and leveraged key relationships with stakeholders such as Business Unit MDs, FDs, SD's and PLC Board to achieve objectives.• Provided decision support and modelling to the International's Divisional Management Team and Business Units acting as the financial “conscience” of the International Business.• Ensured shareholder value and ROA/ROI are maximised.• Controlled and monitored CAPEX and ROA across the IBU's, setting investment and ROA hurdle rates in agreement with UK Group.• Monitored budgeted spend across IBU's, seeking to understand variances and corrective actions working with the International Senior Management Team.• Ensured good financial and corporate governance across IBU's including compliance with relevant international accounting standards and practices. Attendance at overseas audit closure meetings and review of management letters from overseas audit office.• Lead the development of the financial element of the International Budget and 5 year Plans liaising with Business Units and UK Group.Major Achievements In Role:• Responsible for the financial appraisal of a major capital development plans for overseas business unit in South Africa. Resulting in shareholder approval for new warehouse, fermentation and bottling facilities that enabled the business to win exclusive production and distribution of Carlsberg lager locally.• Financial appraisal of various brand and company M&A activity resulting in improved business performance. • Confirmed inefficient operational performance resulting in a major review of manning at one if its IBU's

Head Of Management Accounts

• 2007 - 2012

Leadership of the Management Accounts Team (7 heads) to provide Insightful decision support to key internal stakeholders by means of effective analysis, interpretation and financial advice to each part of the business, resulting with improved performance.• Commercial support to the sales and marketing functions to fully understand, channel, customer, product and brand profitability. Resulting in increased volume & net margin performance.• Key finance contact to ensure that agency brands are delivering the required volume and profit streams in line with the contracts. Ensuring that monthly margin reports and annual P&L’s are produced and ensure that all consumer led marketing costs are fully funded by brand owners.• Supply chain cost control ensuring that all cost centre managers within production, warehousing and distribution fully understand what drives costs and how they can improve business performance by taking corrective action.• Sales and marketing overhead support. Ensuring that cost centre & brand managers are fully aware of how their commercial activities affect performance. Regular reports highlighting performance of brand spend for both Halewood owned brands and agency brands.• Coaching & Development Of Management Accounts Team: Ensuring that the team move away from routine, sterile reporting to really influence the business and be fully aware of the cost and profit drivers and what needs to be done to improve them.• Major Achievement In Role: Supported the international sales team with commercial deal modelling generating price trees for the launch of the company’s flag ship brand in the USA. Working with the NPD teams to compile accurate product costs to determine the project profitability and levels of marketing investment for campaigns locally. The brand was shipped in April 2012 to the required plan. Delivering significant new Net Margin growth for the business.

Management Accountant

• 2002 - 2007

• Coordinator of all Management Information Systems (MIS), for business needs and relationship manager with user community.• SAP Business Intelligence: Development of reporting tools to provide the business with management information in the most effective manner. Utilising presentation tools such as web browsers, static intranet reporting and mobile devices, also considering cockpits and dashboards from the recently upgraded version of SAP Business Warehouse (v7.2)• Monthly Management Accounts: Reporting on key business performance versus budget and comparisons to last year. • Finance Board Reports: Communicating to senior executives the results and key issues in a clear and concise manner, highlighting areas of good and poor performance versus budget, last year and forecast.• Annual Budgets: Preparation and submission of annual budget and forecasts with specific emphasis placed on profit streams from divisions, channels, brands, and customers.Major Achievements In Role: • Instigated and project managed the implementation of a new web based SAP/BI reporting tool to provide the business with fully reconciled real-time volume & net margin reports. Customer and Product profitability cubes accessable to all users.• Integrated the MIS function into the management accounts department. As a result all reporting was consistent and from one department.• Finance representative to the SAP life cycle implementation project team. Covering vendor selection, blueprinting, conference room pilots, user acceptance testing (UAT), go live & post go activities including upgrades and developments. Resulting in a fully integreated controlled process ERP environment.

Financial Controller

• 1999 - 2002

Company Accountant

• 1995 - 1999

Cost Accountant

• 1993 - 1995

Assistant Accountant

• 1991 - 1993

Accounts Trainee

• 1989 - 1991