Paul Meade Email & Phone Number

England, United Kingdom

Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

Within my role at Lantmannen, I am involved and drive improvement in the commercial side of the business working closely with the sales Director and his team. I feel I have given the commercial teams great support and my team and I have given massive support and direction to improve the ways of working and deliver improved reporting and tender process. I am a key member of the S&OP process that has seen massive challenges over the last 2 years when a lot normal ways of working has been removed and we have had to challenge ourselves in many new ways.Work closely with all levels of the business to build , forecasts, budgets. strategic plans, customer tenders, also work with procurement to understand key market indications to ensure all tenders are at the best possible commercials for ourselves and our customers.

Switzerland

Procurement external production manager for Carlsberg group, co-ordinating external production requirements and contracts. Working with many outsourcing partners, to develop a great operating model that builds a strong relationship between supplier and multiple Carlsberg operations, for long and short term requirements.Finding new suppliers for NPD and short/long term requirements, also supporting when product needs to be moved internally, and challenging and working with key suppliers to drive improvements and improved ways of working to deliver improved results for both parties.Creating improved process internally and with external suppliers, to ensure efficient and profitable routes of supply for internal and external partners.

Switzerland

Manage commercial contracts on all UK out-sourcing productionWorking with all areas of the internal business to develop relationships with external manufacturing sites on on-going products and NPD.Review all contracts in place for external manufacturing and ensure strong and efficient working relationships between all parties .Work closely with external manufactures to ensure best fit, and agree all commercials on out sourced products and work together to find improvements that beneficial for all parties involved

Responsibilities • Co-ordinate commercial and production teams, to build the most accurate, profitable operational and financial forecast plan. • Built, implemented, and project managed a new forecasting and budgeting planning system: Infor’s Demand Planning system. This system formalised, centralised and revitalised the Sales & Operations Planning process.• Responsible for referencing the validity of prospective volumes, marketing campaigns, new product development, and for blending these forecasts with statistical base data built from history. • Communicate closely, top to bottom, across the hierarchy of the business, to combine business and volume plans.Key Achievements• Improved forecast accuracy across the organisation by 20% in 6 months. This has led to a reduction in stock write-offs and in selling short-dated stock at loss. It also ensures better working relationships with key customers by limiting stock outages, especially during key promotional periods. • Introduced key reporting criteria to enable the business at all levels, from sales managers to board level, to use a suite of reports to manage customer and brand performance. This has enabled me to evaluate and advise what customers or products to develop and grow profitably, and to identify key trading patterns.• Design and deliver key business deliverables ahead of time and ensure long and short term forecasts are developed to ensure more accurate and efficient business plans.

Bedford

Responsibilities• Reported directly to Finance Director, responsible for all commercial & operating reporting and controls.• Grew and managed a team of 5 accountants and clerks who are responsible for LRP’s, month end, forecasts, budgets, year-end reporting and sign-off, for a sales revenue of approx. £200MKey Achievements• Introduced a customer profitability analysis to the organisation. This helped the organisation see whether long & short term plans were consonant together, and growing in the most beneficial areas and markets.• Built complex scenario planning models, to lead commercial relationships with owners of potential acquisitions (Courage, Kestrel, Directors) and an integral part of negotiations and valuation of brands. Worked on highly confidential information with company directors, with large amounts of discretion to ensure information controlled and deals not leaked.• Introduced key commercial deal support with key customers(Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda etc ), activities, and brand promotions, to improve volume and profitability and decision support for capital acquisitions. • Evaluated our logistics operation, leading to an outsourcing decision which added approx. £2M to our bottom line.• Transformed the finance area from a historic data area and financial reporting group, into a commercial finance area and formed business partnerships with the commercial and operational areas of the business.

• Introduced and implemented manufacturing standard costing system to the organization.• Pushed the integration of disparate manufacturing , stock and sales systems into an online process. • Developed the finance team to be more than a historical reporting team. Drove management information into the organization. • Through significant process improvement, I was able to develop good working platforms with finance and all other areas of the organisation (this had not been in place previously).

December 1990 – November 1998• Developed from Finance junior through to European Finance Analyst, via 4 different roles in 8 years. This period underpinned my future as a experienced commercial and operational finance manager.• Preparation of forecasts, long range plans, and budgets. Production costing. Regular factory performance reporting. Regular sales volumes reporting. Bench marking schedules from all 13 manufacturing factories.

Education record

Acca Qualified