Results
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Business Process Improvement + CAPEX ROI Modeling
Situation
- Long lead time for management to approve CAPEX requests (20 days)
- Cumbersome approval forms with outdated information
- Inefficient annual planning, requiring a total of 15,000 engineer-hours
- No visibility on ROIC impact of single investments or annual expenditure ($300M)
- Dozens of factories pulled in many capital investment directions: safety, reliability, capacity, innovation…
- Frustration from engineering and business communities, rework, delays and lack of trust of the management team
Actions
- Examined the causes of inefficiencies in both the annual planning and single investment processes
- Identified strategies that would streamline CAPEX procedures
- Aligned with engineering and finance leadership on proposed improvements
- Implemented new annual planning process, new ROIC model and new single investment approval workflow
- Trained 350 users on new tools and ways of working
Results
- Reduced time to approve CAPEX requests by 90% (from 20 days to 2 days)
- Reduced annual planning effort by 75% (from 15,000 to 3,700 engineer-hours)
- Increased ROIC by 19%
- Prioritized capital requests according to business and manufacturing strategies
- Reinstated trust into CAPEX management, freed-up engineering resources and improved product speed-to-market
Testimonials
Nic brings value to any engineering, financial or procurement process with his Lean thinking. He pragmatically challenges the status quo with simplified thinking and process workflows to add value to business solutions, such as reducing waste in our capital planning process by 75% and time to approve by 90%. I would recommend Nic to gain major efficiencies in your processes.
Vernon Culver – VP Engineering
Nestle USA
Nic is extremely results-oriented. I had the chance to hire him and see him streamline and drive continuous improvement across our CAPEX processes by eliminating waste and shifting focus to high value add activities. As part of this journey and with his discipline and courage, Nic helped top drive a significant improvement in our ROIC over 12 month period.
Mark Atkinson – Corporate Controller
Nestle USA
Product Cost Reduction + Sourcing Optimization
Situation
- Incremental productivity hard to find in very mature corrugated category
- Hundreds of material/plant combinations, challenging to analyze
- Buyers centralized in Panama, no bandwidth to deep dive into material specifications and applications
Actions
- Analyzed thousands of data points (materials, specifications, suppliers, factories, prices, volumes…)
- Identified 17 materials that would benefit from changing printing technology
- Connected with factories and supply chain to gain additional insights
- Modeled total cost of ownership to assess impact on sourcing, manufacturing, warehousing and logistics
- Established rapport with supplier and found incremental value for both parties
- Organized project timeline with technical packaging team
- Crafted communication package and convinced business leadership to proceed with printing change
Results
- Reduced material cost by $2.4M (50% reduction)
- Improved material ordering lead time by 6 weeks (from 8 to 2 weeks)
- Cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20%
- Reinforced partnership with supplier
- Provided competitive advantage to business
Testimonial
Nic worked on a mission with my team and I was really impressed with the speed he onboarded the mission and found tangible deliverables. He analyzed a large amount of material sourcing data, identified potential value opportunities and validated them using very thorough Total Cost of Ownership models. He then successfully demonstrated the benefits to the business which resulted in onboarding his recommendations which delivered significant savings. I highly recommend Nic for his dedication, enthusiasm, results focus and ability to think critically.
Louise Morrish – Global Category Lead – Flexible & Paper
Nestle Americas
Business Process Improvement + Portfolio Optimization
Situation
- No standard process to annually rationalize SKUs in the Pizza division ($2B in sales)
- Financial considerations only, with low confidence on portfolio impact
- Lack of cross-functional visibility, creating execution issues with sales, manufacturing and supply chain
- No input from commercial and operational teams in the decision-making process, leading to frustration
Actions
- Aligned with leadership on a new annual timeline for SKU rationalization
- Identified single point of contact for each functional area to build new model
- Gathered qualitative and quantitative functional inputs for each SKU
- Formulated scoring system to rank SKUs by holistic performance
- Created simulations of the SKU rationalization impact on top line, bottom line and business operations
- Trained 58 cross-functional business stakeholders on new process, timeline and model utilization
Results
- Eliminated 20 SKUs out of 66, reducing complexity in the value chain
- Improved profit by $5.6M (70bps)
- Elevated division-wide engagement in SKU rationalization, emphasizing holistic value creation over pure financial exercise
- Created adjustable model and annual routine that can be consistently repeated
- Increased leadership confidence to make SKU rationalization decisions
Testimonial
We did not have a robust SKU rationalization process before Nic came along. He did an outstanding job aligning stakeholders to his methodical and holistic approach. In the end, it was much easier to decide on which SKUs to prune, and we increased our profit by more than $5M!
Steven Frye – Sales & Marketing Leader
Nestle USA
Business Process Improvement + Sourcing Optimization
Situation
- Sourcing leadership team had no centralized way to track KPIs
- Missing correlation between sourcing subteams’ performance and overall team objective achievement
- Unknown efficacy of the ways of working between local US sourcing and central buyers located overseas
Actions
- Established and automated KPI dashboard showing real-time progress toward goals to entire department
- Broke down overall sourcing objectives and cascaded to subteams
- Created monthly operational routine with key stakeholders to align on goals and ways of working
- Automated data preparation supporting each meeting with Power BI, and embedded into Microsoft Teams
- Created scoring system tracking both meeting efficacy and goal achievement
- Trained 42 users on new tools and processes
- Created communication package to promote results and competitive intensity between subteams
Results
- Automated KPI dashboard used by leadership to track progress and drive actions
- Subteams’ contribution to overall sourcing objectives now clear and understood
- Key stakeholders empowered to address ways of working, directly impacting KPIs
- Process efficacy reaching 86% in Q3 vs 43% in Q2, reflecting KPI overachievement and teamwork improvement
- Freed-up resources thanks to automation
Testimonial
Nic took our strategic sourcing performance to the next level with his revamp of the Total Service Quality Process. With the monthly operational review he established, we were able to focus on the right KPIs, hold each other accountable and deliver on our priorities. He rigorously kept our stakeholders accountable to the actions that would move the needle, diligently tracking progress along the way. He even automated the whole process, which empowered us to drive performance in the long run. Thank you Nic for driving efficiency and excellence for our team!
Don Haslam – VP Procurement
Nestle USA
Product Profitability Analysis + Product Cost Reduction
Situation
- DiGiorno team looking for creative ways to boost sales without compromising margin
- Marketing decided to add more cheese on the pizza to increase consumer interest
- Unsure of how much cheese to add and impact on top and bottom lines
Actions
- Developed models to evaluate profit and loss changes based on sales growth estimates
- Ran cost scenarios with newly created recipes
- Found discrepancies in quantity of cheese used between SKUs, leading to harmonization opportunities
- Aligned with marketing on proposed scenarios
- Presented to and secured approval from leadership
Results
- Increased sales by $20M
- Increased profit by $6M
- Maintained overall margin thanks to recipe harmonization
- Enabled leadership to make informed decisions regarding cheese usage and its impact on the P&L
Testimonial
I worked with Nic on the Nestle Pizza business when he was in finance and procurement roles. I always appreciated his agility, analytical skills, and strategic thinking, which helped us quickly run financial scenarios and optimize our products to drive sustainable profitable growth on our business. His ability to connect with both commercial and technical teams while thinking end-to-end makes him an asset for any team.
Tim Wallenhorst – Senior Brand Manager
Nestle USA