Martin Willis Email & Phone Number

Warwick, GB

Birmingham, England, United Kingdom

• Initially employed on an interim contract to set up an FP&A function for the fast-growing Higher Education division of this market-leading education and training provider, I was offered the role permanently in Autumn.
• Led the Budget and 5-year plan for the Division.
• Created an in-depth model to understand the cost of delivery for the different segments of the business.
• Introduced a business partnering mindset within the new FP&A team, which was then championed across the wider Finance community.
• Overhauled the KPI reporting suite, focusing on business performance indicators and value-add commentary and insight.

Midlands, South West

Warwick

• Part of the Group Senior Leadership Team of this highly-regarded multi-disciplinary Icelandic company, leading both the Group and UK Finance functions in the timely and accurate provision of all Finance activities.
• Prepared the 5-year strategic financial plan and presented to potential investors and advisors.
• Rolled-out a new Budgeting model to all Divisions.
• Increased content, quality and automation of the monthly Group Management Accounts reporting pack.
• One of two people primarily responsible for achieving a c.10% price increase (25+% margin increase) on one of the Division’s key programmes.

Solihull

Interim role following redundancy.Month-end consolidation and reporting, CapEx support, tracking and reporting, Divisional SOx Champion.

Cheltenham

• Reporting to and working closely alongside the CEO of a £15m turnover Private Equity owned specialist manufacturer, leading a team of 4 direct reports and responsible for all aspects of Finance and IT.
• Introduced a bottom-up budgeting process, ensuring Divisional heads took ownership of their cost / profit centres.
• Improved the product costing process, with checks against ERP data and a focus on Gross Margin instead of Material Margin.
• Supported the Head of Sales in the preparation, presentation and negotiation of a 10% price increase with our largest customer, delivering £100k of additional revenue per annum.
• Increased the level of automation in the monthly management pack and weekly cashflow forecast, introducing control points and error-checks.

Redditch

• Grupo Antolin is a leading player in the automotive industry, with sales of more than €4 billion and a workforce of over 27,000 employees.Originally recruited into Magna Interiors to develop and lead a team of 5.
• Led and managed the business process from original customer enquiry to the presentation of quotation, both for new-Programme RFQs, and for Engineering and other changes on existing Programmes.
• Led the costing, quotation and negotiations for the provision of a £20m contract addition, which will deliver in excess of £4m EBIT over the 8 year Programme life.
• Introduced monthly financial ‘wallpaper’ for Programme Managers and their teams, to foster understanding of gap-to-targets on the Programmes for both per-car cost as well as engineering and tooling spend.
• Actively maintained the detailed 7-year Financial Models for each Programme.

Coventry, United Kingdom

• Working within the JLR Business Unit of Johnson Controls’ Automotive division, later with responsibility for the Discovery Sport programme, the most complex in the Division with 7-year Programme revenue forecast at.
• Introduced monthly Programme Financial Reviews to coach the core Programme team on the commercial impact of design and operational changes.
• Introduced per-item Sales and Margin tracking to the costed Bill of Material, facilitating margin-per-part analysis prior to Start-of-Production. This identified several significant negative-margin items in the.
• Introduced a “Roadmap” tracker, showing the current and forecast weighted sales and margin impact of in-progress and in-negotiation quotes. This was subsequently rolled out to the other programmes.
• Commercial and financial business partner to the Programme and Sales Managers, providing proactive support, guidance and advice, whilst challenging opinions and assumptions prior to key decision making.

Coventry, United Kingdom

• Responsible for the Rebate and External Contract Support (ECS) teams (7 people) within the Shared Service Centre.
• Led the team in the preparation and reporting of monthly rebate forecasts for c.500 suppliers and the claiming and collection of targeted Contract Support income from suppliers.
• Identification and collection of over £160m of rebate income annually from suppliers.
• One of three people responsible for the closure of a £2m ‘gap’ between rebate earnings in Jewson’s published divisional forecast and November estimates of the final rebate earnings for 2010.

Coventry, United Kingdom

• Working within the Finance Shared Service Centre of a £2bn turnover division of Saint-Gobain (encompassing Jewson, Graham and other national brands). Initially joined on temporary contract, promoted to permanent lead.
• Led a team of 4 in the preparation and timely submission of divisional and consolidated UK monthly management accounts and detailed management pack to the UK Board, to Divisional management teams and to the parent.
• Supervised and supported the Planning Accountant in the coordination, consolidation and reporting of quarterly re-forecasts, annual budgets and the 5-year Strategic Plan.
• Project-managed the successful roll-out and implementation of a new group reporting system across SGBD UK & Ireland.
• Co-ordinated the hive-up of several subsidiary legal entities into the main UK trading companies. The project reduced the number of actively trading companies from 17 in 2009 to just 4 in 2010.

Northampton, United Kingdom

Led a team of two in the delivery of the UK Sarbanes Oxley self-assessment programme and of pro-active and targeted process reviews.

Gaydon, Coventry & Solihull, United Kingdom

Part of the team responsible for successful first-year implementation and execution of a Sarbanes Oxley focused Internal Controls review programme.