Brussels Region, Belgium
Ad interim position focused on further professionalizing the finance team, supporting across the regions strong growth and profitability (including via driving Revenue Growth Management), building a long-term profitability roadmap, and driving a stepchange in cash management.
The company continues to grow and expand its middleware, product portfolio, customer base, revenue, and team. While no longer full-time in the company, I am still involved as a shareholder, advisor and sparring partner, and sometimes still more deeply involved in certain topics and dossiers.
Acted with my brother on our love for languages, technology, business and entrepreneurship. I mainly focused on business development, working on our customer base. Linguineo is a Belgian tech startup that specializes in conversational AI solutions for language learning. Our products and services are designed to help learners practice speaking and achieve fluency through realistic, practical contexts using virtual characters and voicebots. We differentiate ourselves in 3 ways: fluency over perfection, science-backed effectiveness, and providing a fun, interactive learning experience.
The contact center industry is at a fast pace in transition from a labor-intensive to AI-intensive one. This AI is similar to Linguineo's, which spurred my particular interest in this role. WEngage is the market leader in Belgium and a European player, with offshore units in Morocco, Suriname and Turkey. My focus was on restoring and improving profitability and cash generation through partnering on a new commercial plan, developing a new pricing strategy & differentiation, working on gross margin improvement, working on the stabilization and expansion of our offshoring units, being a sponsor of innovation/AI projects, driving cost reduction projects, and partnering on restructuring plans.
I fulfilled the role of CFO of Sligro Food Group Belgium, the Belgian B2B retail and food service market leader, which is supplying institutional clients (healthcare sector, government), hospitality (hotels, bars, restaurants, catering) and companies across Belgium and Luxembourg. My team (up to 30 FTE) encompassed financial controlling, accounting, business controlling, accounts payable, and accounts receivable, as well as finance SAP project staff (which temporarily increased the team size to its aforementioned large FTE number) and the legal counsel. Together with the Belgian general manager, I formed the General Management of Sligro Food Group Belgium. Full P&L responsibility, lead of the annual planning cycle and longer-term strategy process. Achievements: * Led a large cross-departmental project that restored and even improved gross margin versus pre-inflation levels (following the inflationary peak that came with the Ukraine War) * Played a role in driving and supporting complex contract negotiations with new top customers, driving strong and profitable growth * Supported the successful M&A of the company Metro * Led the finance part of the SAP implementation project * Revamped and strongly improved, with the A/R manager and his team, the credit collection processes and results
Due to the departure of the CFOs of Austria and Switzerland, I led the finance stream in the merger of the country units towards the new cluster unit (Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland), supporting the business (€500 mln net revenue, €100 mln EBITDA) during this change, engaging the new multi-country finance team (50 FTE), setting up with them the new organogram, functions, and processes.
I fulfilled the role of CFO of Mars Belgium, encompassing the three FMCG segments (Petcare, Chocolate, and Food) for the Belgium, Luxembourg and (for Food only) Dutch markets. My team initially (27 FTE) encompassed financial controlling, accounting, business controlling, accounts payable and accounts receivable, as well as payroll, the pension fund officer and facility services. This role is a matrix role, with a reporting line and being the right-hand to the General Manager Mars Belgium, and having a dotted line to the VP Finance of the region. Full P&L responsibility, lead of the annual planning cycle, co-lead in S&OP. I also fulfilled the role of member of the Board Of Directors of the Belgian Pension Fund. Achievements: * As a leadership team, we drove a business turnaround, from -4% growth in 2018 to +3%, +12% and +5% growth consequently (to €200 mln), with EBITDA rising from €25 mln to €40 mln. I drove and supported, with my team, the financial aspects of these turnaround, including cutting and reallocating investments, playing a key role in the Revenue Growth Management (RGM) agenda (optimizing mix, promo and price, whilst increasing conditionality in contracts), and enabling new business models via new financial guidelines. * Set up with my team a strong internal controls & governance structure * Sponsored the implementation project for VisualFabriq, a pilot project for a new trade management system for our region * Other steps in digital transformation, partially switching to PowerBI and taking first steps in using AI and automation * Revamped the cash forecasting process, increasing predictability and optimizing working capital * Led the outsourcing of most of the operations in the finance team to a shared service center in Poland
I fulfilled the role of regional finance director for a network of six food FMCG factories (UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Russia and South Africa), contract-manufacturing and raws & packs procurement, together representing €400 mln COGS and >800 FTE. This was my first manager-of-managers role, i.e. the finance managers of the respective factories and a central analyst reported to me, with a total team of 35 FTE. This role is a matrix role, with a reporting line to the VP Finance of the region, and being the right-hand (a dotted line) to the VP Supply. Achievements: * Led together with the Industrial Engineering Director a cost savings program, which doubled the annual productivity improvements (savings) in the network from €8 mln to €16 mln * As a regional supply leadership team, we formulated and implemented a long-term masterplan for the network, deciding on priorities, investments, cost saving initiatives, and phasing, in close collaboration with the market side of the business.