James Kaster Email & Phone Number

Houston, Texas, Us

Procure to Pay and Order to Cash leader with focus on continuous process improvements. Partner with executive leaders to achieve targeted $1.5M SG&A savings through vendor management, process improvement, implement sourcing discipline and transaction processing workflows.- Delivered $2.1M direct SG&A savings in 9 months across multiple business functions.- Reduced $165k spending from corporate credit cards by restructuring card program, internal controls and rewriting delegation of authority and company card policy.- Building invoice COE to support order-to-cash automation, integrating 5 disparate systems to produce 65,000 B2B invoices monthly.- Initiated and managing sourcing discipline to drive compliance and savings from vendor relationships.

Advising clients and leading initiatives of transformational process improvements for finance, accounting and operations functions, applying LEAN and Six Sigma principles, reducing costs, improving productivity, and improving EBITDA.► Provided Order to Cash (O2C) evaluations for one client yielding up to $63M improved cash flow through billing and collection process enhancements, integration and select outsourcing.► Delivered Procure to Pay (P2P) assessment optimizing, “hands-free” processing to extend DPO by more than 5 days.► Streamline operations and service delivery to increase accuracy, timeliness and overall service experience.

Sauget, Il, Us

Finance leader for privately-held 3PL based in St. Louis region. Responsible for financial operations, scaling business for growth, implementation of policies, procedures and internal controls. Managing treasury functions, finance back office, investment analysis, process improvement and improving cash flow through active management of DSO and DPO.

Served as the financial executive and strategic partner to the executive leadership team, working with finance, process improvement, RPA / AP, Operations, O2C, P2P, Global Interco Reconciliation automation, Facilities, and Sourcing.► Built teams of specialists to realize $1.7M productivity savings through automation of complex intercompany and balance sheet reconciliations, document digitization, and globalized travel and expense controls.► Create and establish yearly financial objectives that align with the company’s growth plan and market penetration, while driving performance management across various sectors and enabling other executive partners to do so.► Global real estate optimization proposal to yield $5M savings through consolidations and restructuring core site leases.► Coordinate and align practices, processes, and reporting with the corporate office definitions and implement policies, procedures, and processes.► Prepared (O2C) study identifying $32M cash flow improvement through accelerated billing and collections. ► Responsible for cost management and global productivity initiatives for industry top 20 freight forwarders. ► Refined cost controls and managed sourcing, travel, SG&A spending, and over 140 global facilities.► Launched global Coupa Expense plus new MasterCard program to yield $900k savings.

Served as Vice President and General Manager leading North American Facility Maintenance P&L, Field Operations, Pricing, Compliance, and all LEAN initiatives ensuring KPIs were met. ► Implemented a unique service delivery model, standardized equipment, improved operating procedures, and developed business controls to move from decentralized to a centralized operating model. ► Opened new operations in nine cities, expanded service lines in 12 markets growing revenue by $12M.► Improved NOI 2.5x while leading North American real estate services; oversaw a team of 85 field techs and managers.► Established operating KPIs, productivity targets, break-even pricing sensitivity analytics, acquired FL-based company.► Led $20M capital improvement projects in four cities for 14 different properties.

Served as a primary contributor to a $150M strategic initiative to improve margins to meet debt covenants associated with the leveraged buyout, reduce SG&A spending, manage sourcing, facilities, risk management, travel, and process improvement. ► Facilitated $45M SG&A savings, with direct management responsibility for global corporate service functions of real estate, sourcing/purchasing, travel, risk management, and expense controls.► Identified and delivered $110.5M SG&A annualized savings, including:• $23.3M annualized savings from a $44M global real estate portfolio. Created site optimization strategy for tenant property leases and site closures/consolidations. Developed strategic COEs and improved management of office space/support infrastructure.• $56.6M annualized savings attributed to eliminating non-critical spending and implementing process improvements (supplies, print, maintenance, energy consumption, and other services).• $27M annualized savings through implementation of strategic sourcing discipline within $440M operating spend.• $2.4M annualized savings from $20M travel spend through standardizing, sourcing, and controllership.• $1.2M annualized savings from $5M global property, casualty, and FINPRO liability insurance portfolio.► Co-developed Ceridian/UCLA Pulse of Commerce index utilizing transaction data to predict US economic performance.► Executive sponsor Oracle procure-to-pay implementation.► Managed and controlled a $440M global, non-labor operating expense budget, including corporate flight operations.

Boston, Ma, Us

Served as strategic finance, operations, and quality leader for various roles in GE Money, GE Financial Assurance, and related consumer finance business operations across North America.► Lead LEAN/Six Sigma workouts for insurance, mortgage, auto loan, credit card, and ATM service providers in 3 countries. ► Contributor to GE Consumer Finance net promoter score (NPS) initiative.

Boston, Ma, Us

► Led day-to-day operations while managing asset sale of California insurance company for $10.2M gain on asset sale. ► Facilitated $3.9M annualized savings from six-month near-shore and off-shore outsourcing assignments.► Mentored 14 Green Belt projects ranging from call center monitoring to correspondence to IVR optimization, yielding average year-over-year productivity of 18%. ► Led CEO-sponsored CRM initiative, bridging five business units serving over 12M customers to leverage unique customer interactions plus data for targeted marketing, retention, and cross-sell strategies. ► Generated $1.6M of new revenue from a service-to-sales program launched in call center operations.

Boston, Ma, Us

► Led cross-functional teams to institutionalize pricing policy and procedures in support of business growth initiatives.► Created pricing and sales strategy to generate $64M in revenue in three new distribution channels. ► Increased productivity by 34.3%, created cross-functional deal review process to exceed production goal 105%. ► Integrated pipeline, pricing, and deal documentation improving sales close rate by 23% and reduced cycle time 72 days.

Mba Essentials

Finance, Bachelor Science