Rob Cerato Email & Phone Number

Southaven, Mississippi, United States

Greater Denver Area

+Fractional CFO: Provided fast-growing, mission-driven, investor-backed tea e-commerce business with fractional CFO support, including development of path to profitability, securing debt/growth financing to support startup cash burn, cash flow modeling/management, budgeting process and financial model development, strategic planning.+Finance Department Management: Oversaw three-person finance group at $30MM metal casting company, including running monthly management review of financials, identifying financial improvement opportunities, liaising with company’s lender, reviewing month-end close process, overseeing monthly reserve account decisions, making pre-month end revenue management decisions, overseeing and driving down working capital requirements.+Business Exit Planning: After years of declining profitability and overseas cost pressures, management of a metal casting company was unable to decide how to move forward with a failing business. Worked with ownership to develop a quantified list of strategic alternatives, ultimately leading management to an orderly wind-down of their business, resulting in a full paydown of debts and a multi-million dollar payout for ownership group.

Metal Buildings Industry+Scheduling Process Improvement: Worked with $75MM metal building producer to identify and resolve gaps in scheduling process to provide better companywide schedule visibility and milestone dates, improving on-time delivery from 60 to 90%.+Sales Quoting Process: After performing a root cause analysis to show company financial performance issues were tied to the sales quoting process, worked with cross-functional team to redesign quoting methodology and tools, while implementing sign-off process to ensure quote accountability, resulting in a 13% gross margin improvement.+Freight Management: Improved profitability of freight function by over 30% by providing increased lead time to outside carriers, developing backhaul program for internal drivers, rewriting loading SOPs to increase weight per truck, and aligning pricing to market rates.+Inventory Management: Freed up over $100k in working capital by implementing FIFO inventory management system, repurposing excess and obsolete inventory, and incentivizing sales team to sell products with E&O inventory.+Scrap: Reduced scrap costs by over $400k by improving batching/scheduling process and developing linear programing model to reduce waste in multidimensional cutting process.Heavy Industrials Industry+Debt Financing Raise: Raised over $5MM of debt in multi-bank financing deal where process included developing company marketing materials, developing three statement integrated financial model, developing list of target banks, leading conversations with potential lenders, prioritizing bank proposals, and negotiating terms of loan agreement.+Customer Relationship Management: Solidified relationships with top customers of metal casting company to ensure continued purchasing during time of known uncertainty due to client’s financial distress.

Greater Chicago Area

LED Lighting Industry+Growth Strategy: Led strategic market adjacency study to help private equity group double revenue of $60MM LED lighting portfolio company in under five years. Identified over 100 potential adjacent markets for growth and filtered list down to two high potential growth opportunities based on analysis of revenue potential, competitive environment, internal capabilities, and strategic fit. Developed engineering and sales force implementation plans to capture $60MM revenue opportunity, gaining buy in from senior management and private equity ownership to move forward and enter identified markets.+New Product Development: Developed stage gate process for new product development team to improve quality and number of ideas reaching engineering investment decision point resulting in a dramatic uptick in new idea generation and engineering investment by the company.Photography / Service Industry+Sell-Side Advisory: Ran sale process of $30MM photography company, resulting in a successful sale at 3x EBITDA despite negative industry/revenue trends and the legacy of a recent emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Greater Chicago Area

Consumer Packaged Goods Industry+Financial Modeling: Developed flexible integrated three year financial model (P&L, Balance sheet, cash flow, borrowing base) used to aid strategic C-suite decisions and relied upon during a bank refinance that generated letters of intent from 13 of 15 solicited banks and increased borrowing availability from an over advance position to a positive $5MM on a line of ~$20MM.+Liquidity Forecasting & Management: Developed and ran liquidity forecast (13-week cash flow) for struggling consumer packaged goods company which provided financial foresight to make operating changes including the change of vendor payment terms from 26 to 45 days, increasing working capital by $2.4MM.+People / Project Management: Managed two Keystone analysts in developing case for reduction of unproductive & illogical sales deductions. The project was projected to increase EBITDA by over $1MM (15%)

Chicago, Il

Distilled Spirits Industry+Lean Manufacturing: Developed multiple process improvements from study of line operators resulting in an expected cycle time reduction of 23% and downtime reduction of 28% along with a correlated increase in throughput through a facility with $2B in annual sales+Linear Programming: Developed a flexible 5,000 variable linear programming model, using key business drivers as levers to increase bottling tank utilization from 86 to 96% while reducing setups by 10%, minimizing the risk of downstream supply outages, resulting in cost savings in excess of $1M annually.Agriculture Industry / Chapter 11 Bankruptcy+Turnaround Management: Awarded Turnaround Atlas Award’s “Cross Boarder Turnaround Deal of the Year” and M&A Advisor’s “Industrial Goods and Basic Resources Deal of the Year” for corporate turnaround in Chapter 11 bankruptcy that led to section 363 asset sale generating over $20MM in proceeds to pay down 100% of outstanding secure debt, 22% of unsecured debt, and save 130 jobs from elimination.+Bankruptcy Administration: Worked with legal team in development of first day declaration & motions to ensure business continuity through Chapter 11 bankruptcy process.+Business Portuguese: Assisted in Portuguese negotiations of a Brazilian property sale that generated sufficient profits to avoid the otherwise imminent Brazilian bankruptcy filing.Hobby Products Industry+ Product Rationalization: Developed case for and led implementation of product rationalization process with responsibility of interviewing/managing the work of over 40 individuals and developing new company-wide pro forma income statement which resulted in 30% SKU reduction in portfolio of 55,000 products in addition to associated operational complexities while having negligible impact on margins+ Supply Chain Improvement: Developed plan to reduce Asia sourced product lead times by 25% through elimination of non-value added processes and improved inventory management

New York, Ny

+ Risk management strategy: Developed consumer card approval strategy that used non‑traditional credit information to increase American Express’s Generation Y charge card approvals by 50% and create an expected $80M in annual revenue while ensuring risk levels stayed at or below portfolio average

Shanghai, China

+ Logistics & Supply Chain Optimization: Optimized BorgWarner China's logistics network by reducing freight forwarders to increase leveraging power, standardizing international sales terms to decrease customs processing time, uncovering government tax refund opportunities, and implementing new total landed cost purchasing model, all saving $8M over 5 years

Carlsbad, Ca

+ Electrical Engineering: Conducted circuit analysis and functionality tests on government satellite communication systems, discovering new software bugs and saving part costs and test time+ Computer Programming: Learned Python scripting language to write automated email messaging program

M.S.E., Industrial And Operations Engineering

Activities and Societies: The Engineering Global Leadership Honors Program, Tauber Institute for Global Operations University of Michigan.

B.S.E., Electrical Engineering, Minor In International Engineering

Activities and Societies: The Engineering Global Leadership Honors Program, Tauber Institute for Global Operations, Alpha Phi Omega, West.

Summer Study Abroad, Grenoble, France

Studied French language and engineering