Forrest Gray Email & Phone Number

Norwood is a large international promotional products manufacturer with multiple locations, including a facility in San Antonio that employs 325 people. The firm has been acquired by BIC and the site is being closed down in December, 2010.Duties/Keywords:Financial and operational reporting and analysis; annual budgeting, monthly planning and forecasting; risks and opportunities evaluation; key performance indicators (KPI) and metrics reporting; ad hoc reporting and special projects; lean team support; manage, supervise and train staff of five, general ledger month-end close; account reconciliations; standard cost accounting, payroll; Oracle PeopleSoft; KBM.Accomplishments:Reduced month-end close time by 40% despite a 29% reduction in finance headcount.Rebuilt the sales analysis system files and templates that enable queries to be run that show important trends related to our customers’ purchasing habits. In addition to allowing proper volume mix analyses to be done, the improvements I made allow the files to maintain additional detail in one centralized location. The search function is much more user-friendly and allows increased flexibility in parameters of the data being requested.Wrote queries and procedures used to identify problem orders and bottleneck areas, reducing reserved inventory.Tightened procedures related to purchasing, reducing $1.5 million in unknown variances to the low 5 figures, a 98-99% reduction.Created a spreadsheet that linked current month entries to a master worksheet used in month-end analysis reporting that decreased the data entry time by 80%. At the request of the Corporate VP of Finance, I then developed standardized P&L analysis templates for use at all Norwood manufacturing sites.

LYNAY Healthcare, Inc. was a multi-state home health care equipment provider based in San Antonio, Texas. LYNAY was sold in 2004; the company’s major creditor referred me to this position solely to prepare the company for sale. Duties/Keywords:Controller; cash management; taxes; general ledger; month-end close; payroll; SBT software.Accomplishments:Worked with new CEO to take the company into and through Chapter XI, facilitating a successful sale.Caught up several years of delinquent tax returns.Through improved cash management, caught up several months of past-due group health insurance premiums and vehicle loan payments.Using downloads, parsing techniques, and a cross reference table, shortened the procedure used to bring activity from the medical billing computer system into the general ledger system each month from two days to two hours.

Green Light Company was a multi-state household pesticide and fertilizer manufacturer and distributor. The company employed 60 people and had annual sales of $25 million. I began my tenure at Green Light as the Director of Accounting and, after 5 years, was promoted to Chief Financial Officer. An ESOP was formed and the owner was bought out leaving three principals in place to run the company, including myself. In 1999, the other two principals were fired by the Board and I was asked to take on the role of President.Duties/Keywords as President (1999-2001):President; Board of Directors; ESOP Trustee.Accomplishments:Completed the Company’s first formal business plan.Established a new contract-packaging line.Took steps to reduce reliance on single major customer.Duties/Keywords as Chief Financial Officer (1992-1999):Board of Directors; ESOP Trustee; controller; corporate insurance; employee benefits; cash management; bank treasury/lending relations.Accomplishments:Negotiated and implemented employee buyout, saving millions in taxes, without any personal guarantees or outside cash investment.Negotiated major improvements in working capital arrangements with bank. Duties / Keywords as Director of Accounting (1986-1992):Controller; network administrator; Manbase software; manage, supervise and train staff of four; standard cost accounting; accounts payable and receivable; payroll; general ledger; month-end close; credit; tax returns; CPA audit.Accomplishments:Hardware/software conversion reduced average inventory by over $1,000,000 (25%) and reduced in-season short shipments from 20% to 4%, improving the bottom by over $100,000/year.Made software modifications dealing with standard cost bill-of-material (BOM) reports, cost and sales analyses for the sales force, and state product registrations, avoiding state assessed fines for non-registration.