Gavin Jensen Email & Phone Number

Auckland, Nz

Auckland, New Zealand

Auckland, New Zealand

For a person who gets excited about making processes more efficient I've landed in the best job ever. There have been so many opportunities to either automate processes or stop activities that were not adding value. On occasions I've had three process-improvement projects on the go at once.It's a pretty simple role with the same cycle occurring every month. I solely manage the remuneration to 200 franchisees and 600 agencies. The regular cycle has enabled me to quickly identify areas that would return the greatest time savings - why I really took the role .The fun stuff has been improving the processes and restoring trust in the integrity of payment process. A complication was that Information necessary for calculating the payments came in various forms from three parts of the business. Another complication was that ownership of the stores regularly changes. The challenge has been setting up sustainable processes that don't require a business analyst to manage. If you're not a business analyst or technically minded then you're probably not bothered how I fixed this inefficient unreliable process, but if you are then what I mainly did was automate repetitive tasks and link back to one source of truth. However, some activities were of so little value, relative to the time to undertake them, that stopping them was the only sensible thing to do - for some reason no one had thought of stopping them before and yes, the World went on as normal the next day. In summary, in 12 months from starting the job I've restored confidence in the payments process and I've reduced by 25% the time it take to undertake the payment cycle. I've achieved all this by ceasing non-value-adding task, automating repetitive activities, and putting simple checking systems in place to minimise mistakes. I've had so much fun doing all this and I can still see more things to improve in the future so I'm happy.

Palmerston North

On being promoted I had to consolidate two very diverse teams. My approach was to focus on the purpose and vision of our new team, which was providing the support functions for the operation. By regularly talking about our internal customers I developed a good team attitude. 4 years out of 5 I've achieved the Mail Centre’s highest team-engagement score.Again NZ Post is going through a massive period of change by further centralisation and the closure of the Wellington Mail Centre. As part of the senior leadership I have collaborated with my colleagues and project coordinators to ensure these changes have progressed well. We've achieved the successful integration of four regional areas (+25% work) and by March 2015 will have incorporated all the rest of the lower North Island (100% increase)My specific areas of involvement and expertise are in labour resource modelling, calculating how many employees are required on which day at what time to balance resources more closely with work-flow. During the changes I've delegated projects to my team members to encourage their development. I've experienced full range of leadership tasks: communicated the team’s goal and purpose effectively, coached team members, have conducted formal performance improvement plans, one of which went to mediation, have made 4 team members redundant.• Lead a team of seven with responsibility for: forecasting, monitoring production performance, quality assurance, purchasing, billing, IT, building/equipment maintenance, and retail sales.• Created a CRM/sales program and implemented stricter order-management procedures to reduce average delivery time from 17 days down to 6 days. • Consistently managed $4M OPEX to be 3% under budget. • Utilised Lean Six Sigma methodologies to develop testing programme using RFID and GPS technologies and analysed data to identify root-cause of mail service performance failures; improved PNth’s ParcelPost from ~60% to 96% delivery on time.

Palmerston North

I joined NZ Post at a time it was going through a large amount of change - centralising its processing operations and incorporating new technology. Although I had no experience of the postal industry, or automated mail sorting equipment, I quickly learned the fundamentals.In my role I was responsible for the automated mail sorting equipment. There was a high degree of mistrust in the new technology by the existing staff so I quickly organised a testing programme before the equipment became operational. The results of the testing proved that the beliefs of the existing staff were incorrect and after I communicated this to them in a simple manner there was a general acceptance of the technology.The operational process had many problems with consistency in quality. I improved quality through identifying problems in the process and then used appropriate remedies such as visual aids or standardised instructional signs. In this role I set and managed a $4M OPEX budget, and set and monitored $5M payroll budget I assisted my colleagues to reduce cost per unit by 10%, even with a cumulative 12.5% pay-rise.To reduce costs I restructured rosters to align the labour-resource with the work thereby reducing staff resources by 6% and improved efficiency by 10%. I became proficient in the modelling and simulation program iThink. Within 15 months of starting the role I had established a new highly engaged support-team, which involved courageous conversations with two long-term employees to the point that they left the company. I had established a clear understanding within the team as to its purpose, which was a support function to the processing operation. The team developed good awareness of who its customers were.I led a team of 5: 3 mechanical/electrical technicians, a production analyst and a quality analyst. The position was disestablished through restructuring and I was promoted to a larger role.

Palmerston North

Five Star Pork is a farmer-owned cooperative that supplied 15% of NZ's fresh pork, a FMCG. It endeavoured to move up the value-chain by producing its own small-goods and selling fresh pork cuts.The company then entered a joint-venture with a Singaporean company to export fresh pork into the Singaporean market. At this stage the GM was spending most of his time in Auckland running the domestic and export chilled pork side of the business so I was appointed as Operations Manager.This role entailed managing the supply of 2500 pigs per weeks from 30 farmer-suppliers located throughout the North Island and top of the South Island. The pigs were processed at three abattoirs. I provided regular Company and Market updates to members.50% of the trade was to one of NZ's largest supermarket chains so delivery in full, on time and in specification was critical.My responsibility was setting the buy-price that we paid our farmers for various classes of livestock. I also set the whole carcasses sale-price so I managed the margin, or profitability of the business' carcass trade. Over a 3 year period I increased the profit margin by 25% or $200K.I managed a team of three, one being remote in Auckland.As it was not always possible to balance supply with demand it was sometime necessary to bone and freeze surplus carcasses. I managed frozen inventory of up to $750K at three sites around the North Island.

Palmerston North

Five Star Pork is a farmer-owned cooperative that supplied 15% of NZ's fresh pork. The main emphasis of this role was assisting the company's farmer-suppliers to improve their farm performance and the quality of the end product - chilled pork.To help improve farm production I facilitated quarterly farmer-discussion groups focussing on key performance indicators. I managed the collection and reporting of farm production performance for benchmarking.I developed a Farm Quality Assurance programme and promoted its acceptance by the farmer-suppliers. The programme was audited by AgriQuality and I achieved 97% compliance by farmer-suppliers. The process for recording livestock details for payment to farmers was completely manual. I developed a software program that automated the transfer of livestock records from abattoir, which reduced administration resource by ten hours per week. As I gained more understanding of the business I extended the capability of the software program to simplify all the functions around managing a pork supplier's payments and supply, such as production reports that enabled producers to easily determine profitability lines of livestock.I collaborated with the GM to implement a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) program. The task involved examining a number of software providers to determine which had the best fit with our business. The transfer to the new system required a high degree of planning and additional hours to ensure that our payment terms of 7 days were maintained.Once the new program was installed I collaborated with the software provider so as to create a connection between the two programs.The company then embarked on a path of trying to move up the value-chain. I assisted the GM in establishing a joint-venture with a high value small-goods producer and then the purchase of a business that produced and supplied chilled pork and small-goods into the Auckland catering market.

Taranaki, Wanganui & Manawatu, New Zealand

The Company was one of the largest users of maize in the region. As it had had difficulty obtaining sufficient supply in previous years the owners decided it may be best to deal direct with farmers. I was employed to establish this supply from local farmers. It was necessary to supply seed and chemicals, which was difficult because of concerted opposition from local grain merchants. Through perseverance I made a connection with Pioneer Seeds (the largest supplier of maize seed in NZ), which facilitated supplies through an independent party. Within 6 weeks of start-up I was successful in contracting 2,500 tonne.The Company had also recently established a chicken processing plant and required a sales representative so when not busy with grain supply I sold fresh and frozen chicken, and eggs. It was my first experience with a FMCG. The local market was extremely competitive being dominated by Tegel and Ingams. It was my first sales experience, but I was successful in achieving the objective of having the freezer empty for the next six week cycle of processing.I left the company in order to undertake university studies, which I believed would enable me to step up to the next level of management.

Bolton, United Kingdom

I started at this company as a cleaner, but the next day I was asked to manage the warehouse. The business created ready-made curtains for a large mail-order company.The warehouse, which contained approximately $0.5M of inventory, was in disarray with lines of the same fabric in various places. I quickly implemented an inventory system saving $50K/year through cessation of ordering material that was thought to be out-of-stock, but was actually still in stock. The production process was also a lot more efficient as I could quickly find and supply any fabric order within a few minutes so the next stage of production was never stopped. The machinist that started the production process were so satisfied with my improvements, because they were on piece-rates and therefore earning more money, that after six weeks bought me a magnum bottle of champagne and a meal at a restaurant.

Bachelor Of Applied Science (B.A.Sc.) [1St Class Hons], Agribusiness/Agricultural Business Operations

Activities and Societies: Athletics• Majored in Agribusiness • Awarded First Class Honours • Dean’s Merit List for undergraduates (1996 &.

Education record

Activities and Societies: Too much Role Play gaming.