Roger: Chartered Accountant and FD, Transforms Ops in Expanding Businesses

A Chartered Accountant and commercially orientated FD, Roger has transformed the accounting and finance functions of several expanding businesses, from start-ups to complex conglomerates - driving costs out and building quality in.

Interim Career Highlights

At TUI Northern Europe (formerly Thomson Travel Group) he worked with Deloittes to design and build a Shared Service Centre (i.e. a new function with new processes, systems and people) to provide common financial administration and accounting services to Lunn Poly, Thomson, Britannia and Special Holidays Group. Then, as Operations Manager, Roger set up and managed the Centre for 9 months as the businesses transferred their workloads to this new service.

Following the collapse in stock market values and volumes, he advised a leading stockbroker on cost reduction and margin maximisation strategies.

At a London Borough Social Services Department - he proposed new procedures and control measures for 3rd party expenditure. Together with the introduction of a new resource management system, this resulted in reducing administration and invoice processing costs of 3rd party care contracts by 70%.

Roger set up the accounting procedures, systems and management reporting for a venture capital backed start-up consultancy, Kendrick Ash.

In three weeks, he integrated the accounting functions of 3 recently acquired companies into one, for a Telecommunications company.

Permanent Roles

To enable ICL to drive down the costs of its Finance function, Roger lead a senior team that radically engineered and standardised the way the whole Finance function would operate globally. This included new organisation, procedures and systems, operating through regional Shared Service Centres, reducing costs by 40%.

As FD of CFM Group, ICL's outsourcing subsidiary, he managed the Finance function over 5 years to successfully control and support the rapid growth of the business by establishing robust risk analysis processes for new contract bids, introduced standard service costs to drive profitability by service as well as client, and set Finance up as a service, not just a function.

Prior to ICL, Roger was FD of 2 UK subsidiaries of foreign companies in the IT hardware and software businesses.

His career also includes Black & Decker, where he was a divisional Chief Accountant and progressed to UK General Accounting Manager, and the motor industry where he was a plant Financial Accounting Manager.