Joe Mertes Email & Phone Number

Nashville, Tn, Us

Lebanon, Tn, Us

Lebanon, Tn, Us

Charlotte, North Carolina, Us

Charlotte, North Carolina, Us

Dug-in to complete five-year strategic plan, collaborating with external consultants, subsidiary business units, and parent company, mapping out 100% increase in sales across six market segments Tasked with instilling formal FP&A procedures in rapidly expanding organization, collaborating with geographically disparate IT, finance, accounting, and business partners all with varying degrees of experience and grasp of financial principles, to drive toward a reporting and analysis structure that provides transparency into the operations of the business and establishes guardrails for strategic decision-makingDesigned and implemented FY20 budget process, from model to presentation, building financials from the ground up, providing a realistic and multi-faceted picture for the future of the organization to new executive teamPartnered with internal and external IT teams to implement BI software for revamped management reporting requirements in extremely tight timelines

Chesapeake, Virginia, Us

• Partnered with new executive team to design and report new internal financial modeling highlighting inflection points and KPI’s on $10 billion in sales, $3.5 billion in annual gross margin, $180 million in shrink, and $200 million in retail markdowns• Collaborated with operations leadership to improve budget and forecasting process, realign operational strategy by setting new store profitability metrics focusing on increasing sales and gross margin, and reducing store manager turnover leading to a 100bps improvement across all inventory related expenses, as well as a 3% increase in comparable store sales• Connected with key finance and IT stakeholders to design, implement and monitor new ledger system that aligns two legacy systems and converts 15 million daily transactions into an easily auditable and analyzed data set• Crafted a new financial close and reporting process, as well as a new executive financial reporting package, working with auditors and cross-corporate teams on key components of a complex $18 billion merger• Designed and managed $100 million physical inventory effort, teaming up with 3rd party vendor and operations to inventory 1200+ stores in three weeks, meet a firm FTC deadline, and ensure the compliance of our acquisition agreement

Chesapeake, Virginia, Us

• Managed $500 million global cash position, including investing activities and borrowing from short term credit facility ensuring business stability and growth• Partnered with global sourcing teams and international banks to implement best practices in overseas subsidiary buying group ensuring seamless international sourcing operations in less than 6 months• Collaborated across global business units to execute a standardized terms policy netting a $6 million gross margin benefit and a $30 million working capital benefit• Worked with 20 external banking teams to renegotiate $990 million short term credit facility, increasing the facility by $100 million and lowering the borrowing rate by 12bps• Presented to Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s credit rating teams on ongoing business performance and credit worthiness achieving a stable credit rating in advance of a $19 billion merger.

Chesapeake, Virginia, Us

- Executed ad hoc and monthly financial reporting through high level SQL and Excel skills- Collaborated with IT and Merchandising to stand up best in class $350 million A/R process ensuring profitability for new 3rd party logistics process- Formed strong relationships across multiple departments to design and implement a $1 billion inventory process, reducing complexity and freeing up time for store team members

Lexington, Sc, Us

- Created finance operations from the ground up and instilled a culture that focused building lasting partnerships through regular touch-bases and becoming a resource for sales and operations teams instead of an adversary- Worked with customers and the sales team to budget and forecast sales, cost of sales, and SG&A to maintain an accuracy run-rate of 50bps

Master Of Business Administration (Mba)

Bsba, Finance