Andrew Heys's Linkedin Analytics

I'm an experienced commercial finance director with broad and varied manufacturing and FMCG expertise. Always able to see beyond "the numbers" and focus on the bigger picture, I enjoy engaging the wider business audience by bringing finance to life at every opportunity. Helping develop others through coaching and mentoring gives me real energy, my peers appreciate my calm and balanced decision making, sage advice and good humour under stressful conditions. The majority of my career has been spent at Kepak Convenience Foods (KCF), home for the Rustlers and Feasters brands. During this time the business has achieved significant volume and value growth, from producing and selling approx 60 million consumer units in 2005 to 135 million units in 2019. Some of my key achievements and career highlights are summarised below. Transformational leadership Upon joining KCF the leadership team was faced with having to turn around an ailing commercial p&l and make significant operational improvements. Taking the financial lead to address the commercial issues I was able to identify bad practice and lack of robust control, new processes were introduced and the p&l showed progress over a period of months to regain acceptable levels of profitability. I was also able to support the operations director in tackling the production issues we faced leading to achieving class leading efficiencies over time. In 2009 KCF lost its main customer, Tesco, to the then competitor Eatwell Ltd who owned the Feasters brand. This initiated a complete review of the businesses commercial strategy as we actively sought growth in the convenience channel. Losing Tesco sharpened up the business and as finance director I was fully involved in re-structuring the salary base, re-engineering product offerings and rationalising the supplier base. After a two year hiatus Tesco was regained and KCF went into a high growth phase. Acquisitions After regaining Tesco supply in October 2011, KCF was in a position to acquire Eatwell's competitor brand - Feasters. This was completed at the end of January 2012 with my involvement focused on the TUPE process of some 80 staff and the commercial modelling of the addition Asda and Sainsbury's volume that resulted from the aquisition. System implementation Movex ERP 2006. Chair of implentation team. Futurmaster forecasting and planning system 2008, Chair of implementation team. People Strategy Champion the transformational People Strategy through the senior HR manager, culminating with a significant improvement in the Great Places to Work Trust Index.