Finance Monthly hears from José R. Sánchez, the President and CEO of Chicago-based Norwegian American Hospital, who discusses what it takes to be a CEO of a hospital and the initiatives that the hospital has been up to since we last spoke a year ago.
I have been President and CEO of Norwegian American Hospital since 2010 and have had a long career in healthcare, going back 30 years, mostly in New York. I spent almost 16 years with the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation where I held a number of positions during my tenure in various leadership roles. I was the most senior leader within the system, responsible for the largest healthcare network that included 3 hospitals, 23 clinics and over 9 000 employees. Healthcare is a very competitive field in just about every part of the country. The rules I follow are excelling in any responsibility given to me and managing an efficient operation. I focus on quality improvement, best practices, growing business, expanding services, addressing community needs and having a viable bottom line.
A successful hospital CEO knows how to cultivate leadership within the organisation. I believe that inherent leadership skills that engender the support and confidence of the providers, patients, and the surrounding community are most important. Good leaders will not only engage with their executive team but the best leaders are those who engage at all levels of the organisation. Additional skills that have been helpful to me are those I have been able to gain through roles in management and understanding operations, while staying updated on current changes in the market. I focus on identifying and bringing in the best talent for the success of the organisation. It is also important to understand the politics of healthcare. I believe there is a very close relationship between understanding the fundamental principle of operations in the healthcare setting and understanding how policies are shaped. You need to be able to balance both equally and be able to identify critical priorities and act on those priorities, on behalf of, or for, the benefit of the organisation.
As we understand today, healthcare is an evolving system. The direction of healthcare is very unclear and this is probably the most disruptive time ever in healthcare. Therefore, there is greater demand for training the workforce to respond to those changes. In order to make every attempt to have high moral in the organization, it is important to value the roles and responsibilities that the workforce has. Communication is also key for high morale, taking time to explain trends in healthcare, and working in collaboration as a team. Celebrate the successes openly and openly address the challenges we have every single day. Staff development is key to improving and maintaining high moral. Standardisation of policies across the board is critical and transparency is key as well. Trust is a major driver to maintain and improve morale.
The successes of Norwegian are many but we have been able to keep the doors open by being a proactive organisation, representing the needs of the community by creating specific programs that address the health disparities in the community. We also have been able to have a very lean, efficient organisation and have been a financially viable institution, posting a profit for the last 6 years. We made significant improvement in quality across the organisation and have received numerous recognitions and awards, both nationally and locally. In 2015, NAH received the Healthgrades® Patient Safety Excellence Award™. This distinction put Norwegian American Hospital within the top 10% of all hospitals evaluated for their excellent performance in safeguarding patients from serious, potentially preventable complications during their hospital stays. We were recognized for having the lowest hospital inquired infection rate among 67 hospitals in Greater Chicago area. In 2017, our Pediatric Care-A-Van received the prestigious American Hospital Association NOVA Award. Only five NOVA Awards are given nationwide each year. We have engaged the community to be active participants in the hospital and to provide input to improve quality and community engagement. We also are very proud of our relationship with all the stakeholders in the community: community based agencies, schools and the business community. Some of our successes of pride include the financial investment for the renovation of the first floor of the hospital and the creation of our own family residency training program.
NAH has really addressed the healthcare needs of the community and taken responsibility to develop and grow the next generation of healthcare providers through our active participation with medical students and our resident program. We also are the largest employer in the Humboldt Park community, so approximately 65% of our workforce comes from residents of the community. We serve as the economic anchor to the surrounding communities. Norwegian American Hospital reinvests back into the community through programs to care for the underserved and uninsured, manage chronic conditions like diabetes, health education and promotion initiatives and outreach for the elderly. Our Comprehensive Diabetes Centre addresses the diabetes rates in our community that have risen exponentially. We also started a new Family Medicine Residency program to help attract new doctors to the area because physicians tend to remain in the communities where they complete their residency. Our partnerships with local faith-based organisations have opened doors to raise awareness of specific health needs in our community. Recently, Norwegian American Hospital donated land where a veterans’ home was constructed, a move that symbolizes a long-term commitment to Chicago’s homeless veterans and their quality of life. Our hope is that dependency on hospital services will be reduced. People living on the streets tend to cycle in and out of emergency rooms and in-patient stays. NAH is proud to be among the first hospitals in the City of Chicago to address homelessness and housing for veterans.
We have fully embraced the Affordable Care Act with participation during open enrollment periods to expand Medicaid for those individuals who are eligible for the program. We also support programs in the community and are active participants in health fairs. Community health fairs are go-to events for our local residents who want to learn more about a variety of health topics and wish to receive free or low-cost screenings. In addition, throughout the year, NAH offers numerous opportunities for the public to learn more about key health topics and how to incorporate healthy lifestyle changes. This year, we have a Care-A-Van that brings services to schools and children and families throughout the year. The state-of-the-art mobile clinic brings healthcare to 3 000 underserved children who otherwise would not receive care for asthma, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, lead poisoning and other preventable health disparities.
At the forefront of our agenda is our quality journey that has direct impact in patient outcomes. Each quality service line has a dashboard that reports clinical metrics. We have an external affairs committee that was developed several years ago with members who are residents of the community. They have become the ears of the community to provide input to hospital leadership as it relates to improving care and communicating community concerns and needs. We do a community assessment regularly to evaluate and understand the need for services required in the community. Our commitment to improve healthcare outcomes and patient safety is manifested in the performance results of several national clinical measures within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Impatient Quality Reporting Program. NAH exceeds the national scores or benchmarks in many categories which include mortality, patient safety indicators and Hospital Acquired Infections. We exceed the national benchmarks in five out five mortality categories and six out of seven patient safety indicators, with a slightly better overall patient safety score than the national benchmark. NAH is accredited by The Joint Commission for hospital and behavioral health programs; College of American Pathology for laboratory services; Healthcare Facilities Accreditation Program (HFAP) as a Certified Primary Stroke Center; and Illinois Department of Public Health’s (IDPH) Level II Perinatal Care Certification.
The goal of the hospital is to change and evolve every day. We need to be adaptable to a very disruptive healthcare environment. We have to focus on trends in healthcare which includes the triple aim of quality, population health and financial viability. The policies of the state continue to change and we need to adapt and respond quickly to those changes. It is clear that our goal needs to be on quality improvement, best practices, expansion of services, efficiency and using technology as a tool to help us accomplish our objectives. NAH recognizes that health is more than simply treating patients who come through our doors. We want to build not only a healthier, but a more prosperous community.
2018 has been a trying year for healthcare. We are beginning to see acceleration of mergers and acquisitions throughout the country and beginning to see merging models of care. In 2018 we are beginning to see other providers emerging in the market, such as CVS, Walgreens and others.
We are beginning to look at challenges and changes in healthcare and at opportunities to improve the current system. Certainly, in this very difficult time there are great opportunities to improve care, address the need of consumerism, growth and efficiency and develop new models to address the population needs. Healthcare today is about collaboration, we can no longer exist in silos. The solution to many problems will require a collective effort of sharing information, sharing responsibilities and focusing on innovation. I suggest that new leaders need to pay attention to demographic changes in the country as well as the elderly population that continues to grow. We need to not only focus on health, but the social determinate of health: food, housing and transportation. Prevention and education will continue to play a significant role to the outcome of interventions we will make.
2018 will be a year to focus on positioning ourselves strategically on many different fronts. Growth, efficiency, financial viability and adapting to the new healthcare order. We will focus on sustainability and leverage the gains we’ve made. We will create more growth opportunities for the hospital outside of our four walls. Our focus will be on shaping policies that address the needs of the people who comprise this community. We will continue to find funding solutions for the programs that have been subsidizing NAH. We will do all of this so that we can continue to provide the highest quality of care for the most vulnerable members in our community.
Positioning the hospital for 2018 is in the hands of the leadership of the hospital to create the vision and future to keep the tradition of Norwegian American Hospital alive, which has served the Humboldt Park Community for over 120 years.
Website: https://www.nahospital.org/
Digital transformation in finance has been the word on many people’s lips for some time now with new FinTechs being created on a daily basis. But it’s not just the FinTechs that have made a shift in this sector, it is also the big global tech firms such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft (GAFAM) that are now giving many organisations a run for their money, finance included, particularly with the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) coming into force.
Flexible and nimble challenger banks are also looking at how they can inject the market with customer-led, creative and digital solutions. Whilst there have been casualties and many failed attempts to claim a share of the market, this injection of competition has certainly stirred things up and made everyone review their brand, how they operate and engage customers more effectively.
Given the challenges over the last ten years, and the marketing-led approach that has been taken by many of these new entrants in financial services, it’s not surprising that the spotlight has returned to marketing and communications as a central component to developing a robust growth strategy.
Monzo, for example, is one such organisation that has ripped up the rule books and taken a fresh new approach to engaging a younger, digital first end customer. Having started as a digital only banking service it was granted a full banking license earlier this year.
Never has it been more relevant and important to have a robust marketing and communications process to support reputation and the development of more credible and trusted relationship with customers.
Central to this is being clear as to what your story is, and what you want to be known for. In an industry where there are many new and older organisations, having a clear point of view that is different and positions you as a credible leader is key to success.
Integral to this communication’s led approach is having a CEO and leadership team that will take the plunge and lead the discussion along this journey. As the head of an organisation, the CEO will directly influence the personality of the business. He or she will set the tone for business behaviours and be fundamental in the creation of its identity (with a little help along the way). In many ways, the CEO is an essential member of the marketing team and leading voice piece for the business, or arguably should be.
Whilst CEOs are rightly focused on growth and financial return, they also recognise the value of building the ‘good’ reputation of their business, with many seeing themselves as the reputational stewards. The KPMG 2017 Global CEO outlook report outlines how reputation and risk, alongside trust in a time of disruption, has risen on the CEO agenda to become one of the top most important issues they face today.
We recently surveyed over 500 CEOs and CMOs, and our research showed us that whilst 95% of CEOs claim to regularly engage with marketing, over 70% then go on to provide a range of reasons why this does not happen in reality. When the CMOs were asked about the levels of contact that they had with their CEO, 42% said they still struggled to engage their CEO. This was particularly interesting given the fact that 84% of CEOs believe that a robust communications strategy is critical to business growth.
It appears that whilst many leaders believe they are involved and engaged, there is a perception gap between the CEO and CMO on what this really means, and what is required of the CEO.
So, despite its growing importance in driving growth and supporting new entrants in the financial services industry and further, there is still a real challenge that needs to be overcome in educating the CEO and leadership teams around marketing and communications in practise and their need to engage actively in this. They may understand its importance, but it appears many CEOs are still unclear about the role they should play, and the value this will have.
For more information on this topic and advice about how we can help you approach this please go to: https://speedcommunications.com/xchange/leadership-marketing-gap/
Driven by his passion for technology, George Anderson founded Enterprise Engineering, Inc. (EEI) in April 1995. Throughout his career, he’s built a company that has garnered a number of honors and awards, including inclusion in the Deloitte and Touche Fast 50 and Fast 500, as well as the FinTech 100.
Enterprise Engineering works with Financial Institutions and FinTech developers to securely and reliably connect people to their money, through any channel they care to use. The company’s software products facilitate data access, aggregation and transaction processing for many of the world’s largest Financial Institutions. By brokering access to vast amounts of financial data, EEI is able to power a wide range of applications and leverage analytics that power growth for the company’s partners.
This month, Finance Monthly had the pleasure of speaking with George about EEI’s award-winning software solutions and the exciting journey that starting and running his company has been to date.
What are Enterprise Engineering’s ethics and priorities towards its clients?
Before the term ‘FinTech’ was even coined, NY-based EEI was successfully delivering financial data solutions to leading Financial Institutions. From our inception, the commitment to build ground-breaking financial software solutions has been the cornerstone of EEI. We have unparalleled customer focus, comprehensive resources, and in-depth subject matter expertise, making us a trusted adviser to many of the world’s largest banks and wealth management firms.
Today, EEI’s reputation as a world-class ‘trusted adviser’ is legendary on Wall Street. We have been in business over 22 years - not a lot of companies get to the 20-year milestone and we feel incredibly lucky to be here. We take great pride in being one of the very first FinTech companies and the pioneers of financial data aggregation.
Key attributes have led to EEI’s success, making us a standard in the industry. In any successful business, having the ability to spot talent and retain the highest caliber of individuals is key to being effective. We are proud of our incredible team and the high rate of repeat business that demonstrates the quality of their work.
Above all is our strong commitment to our clients and their future success. We understand how to build and deploy enterprise grade technology products. EEI’s products run every day, aggregating and accessing tens of millions of account records for major financial institutions without fail. Our goal is to continue to build leading-edge solutions that offer secure, competitive advantages to our customers.
Tell us a bit about the formation of Enterprise Engineering.
EEI first started as a professional services firm and even had a learning centre where we were wildly successful in teaching database courses and application development. In 1998, we developed a software product for one of our clients, a major financial institution, and our history began. Our software was built to ensure that it was rapidly deployable – a design principal behind our products since day one.
To date, EEI has delivered software solutions to the financial industry for over 20 years. These have been some of the most volatile and challenging times, but throughout our entire history, we have maintained a strong relationship with the leaders in the industry and continue to partner with the top firms as an adviser for their technical and business objectives. As CEO, I am personally involved with many of our initiatives and will continue to stay current on market conditions and technological advances.
We have developed a sophisticated software product set that integrates with personal financial management tools, SMB accounting software, tax packages, and expense management applications.
With the help of our high-level subject matter experts, we have created and deployed test and development methodologies that enable our software and professional services to be extremely complimentary.
Tell us about EEI’s growth & transformation over the years
EEI evolved from the Wall Street and Capital Markets space. Since inception, we’ve been working with complex investment and client problems. Our initial software product, EnterpriseFTX™, launched in 1998 to streamline banking by supporting all banking functions, including checking, savings, wealth management products, brokerage, bill pay and funds transfer. Today, EnterpriseFTX™ has morphed into a leading edge software product suite, which when used together, can support all products within a retail bank, wholesale bank, capital markets and wealth management – capabilities that no other product on the market has.
In the last few years, EEI has seen tremendous growth. In addition to our new customers and partnerships, we launched our next generation software solutions, which have helped revolutionize the financial services industry. Tax Navigator™, EEI’s only cross industry product with several government agencies as clients, enables automatic tax data downloads and distribution to any tax management and reporting platform. Tax Navigator™ is a subset of Commander™, EEI’s flagship product. Commander™ leverages data from a financial institution’s internal platforms to provide accurate, timely and secure automated access to financial information.
However, what truly distinguishes EEI in the industry today is our illustrious product, the Trusted Network Platform™, a cloud solution with the ability to aggregate ‘assets held away’ across multiple Financial Institutions. Often, clients distribute their total assets among multiple wealth management firms to minimize risk. With financial advisers only seeing a fragmented view of a client’s assets, it is impossible to provide holistic financial advice. Using EEI’s Trusted Network Platform™, financial institutions can now provide a secure, accurate, real-time, holistic view of their clients’ data, utilizing internal and held-away assets.
Sitting on top of all of EEI’s software products is our financial services API, the FS-API™. This was the first commercially available Financial Services API ever deployed and has capabilities well beyond the industry standard, such as money movement & bill payment. It is currently deployed in multiple financial institutions, providing secure and reliable access to financial data every day.
It’s funny, EEI is not a household name, yet there’s a good chance that the average person is using, or has used, our software without even realizing it. We work with all financial institutions, Millennium platforms, service providers and FinTechs to securely connect their clients to their money through any channel, including Quicken®, Mint, QuickBooks™, Xero™ and hundreds of other channels. We sit at the centre of the financial ecosystem, providing access to financial data to these participants, in a controlled and secure way. If you use one of these products or bank at a major financial institution, it is very likely you are using EEI’s software.
When working in an industry that is constantly changing, what do you do to ensure that you are at the forefront of any emerging developments?
It’s been quite a journey. EEI has overcome some challenging times under unprecedented conditions, but our commitment to our clients and continued innovation has led us to drive the future of financial data needs. We aggregate over $7 trillion in assets for 7 of the top 10 wealth managers and are considered experts in the financial services Industry. We have been at the forefront of the changing landscape in aggregation and digital banking. In Financial Services, traditional business models continue to be challenged by evolving customer demands, regulatory pressures and the proliferation of FinTech apps accessing data. Financial institutions need a fast and secure way of providing their clients with a single, customized view of all their financial data and the explosion of FinTech apps using data aggregation has led Financial Institutions to explore more efficient and higher-quality data access methods for their account holders. While challenging for our customers, this makes for an exciting time for EEI. We are at the centre of market acceleration in wealth management, enabling us to help our clients react to market demands and gain the competitive edge they need. Our traditional competitors have not been able to deliver the breadth of services, nor the reliability, that EEI can consistently provide.
What does the future hold for you and Enterprise Engineering? What is your advice for success in this modern tech-focused world?
Looking into the future, I am most excited about the growing API market. It’s an exciting time with lots of opportunity. Financial institutions need to be careful and thoughtful about their decisions surrounding API-based data sharing agreements. There is a lot of noise from both the big banks and the FinTechs with each using a different API standard. Big FinTech companies and large banks can deal with these one off implementations and multiple standards, but others will not be able to scale. Our goal is to standardize data sharing.
APIs are different depending on the Financial Institution or FinTech company offering them, and therefore, the implementation process is different each time. Financial Institutions should question which APIs are scalable and viable. Over time, we will not only see Financial Institutions finding it complicated to comply with the manifold standards while implementing APIs, we will also see consolidation, representing risk in the middle to their customers. To solve this predicament, we have architected the FS-API™—a real-time, multi-protocol, multi-channel API that acts as a universal connector. EEI has been developing systems for the major FinTechs and financial institutions for a long time. Our API is constructed to provide an ‘insurance policy’ and a layer of protection to anyone who is using it. If you leverage our API, you won’t worry about scale or one-off implementations – we abstract you from all of that.
You support various charities – can you tell us a bit more about your involvement in the community?
At EEI, we contribute time and resources to charitable endeavors focused on empowering communities and supporting children, families and animals. It is our privilege and responsibility to support organizations that are making a remarkable difference. Some organizations we actively support include the United Way, ASPCA, Friends of Karen, where I am on the Advisory Board, and Make-A-Wish Connecticut.
Website: http://www.joineei.com/
Bitcoin will not become the world’s sole currency in 10 years - there will be many successful cryptocurrencies - and Ethereum is likely to take over Bitcoin’s dominant status, affirms the deVere Group.
The comments from Nigel Green, founder and CEO of deVere Group, follows bullish Bitcoin claims from Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of social media giant, Twitter.
In an interview with The Times, Mr Dorsey said: “The world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency. I personally believe that it will be Bitcoin.”
The deVere CEO, who in February launched the deVere Crypto app due to “soaring global demand”, comments: “Unlike Jack Dorsey, I do not believe that Bitcoin will become the world’s sole currency in 10 years.
“The original cryptocurrency is likely to remain the most dominant one in the market for some time, especially with its scalability issues being tackled.
“However, I am confident that there will be many successful cryptocurrencies alongside Bitcoin. This is primarily because they all have different inherent characteristics, strengths and values and, therefore, they are useful in different ways for people and organisations.
“Also, the market itself is set to grow exponentially, resulting in greater usage of and investment in all the major cryptocurrencies. This growth in the market will be driven by many factors. These include that simply an increasing number of individuals, firms and organisations are becoming aware of, have a better understanding of and use cryptocurrencies; and also because financial regulatory bodies around the world are increasingly looking to regulate cryptocurrencies, which will give investors even more protection and confidence in the market.”
Mr Green continues: “Jack Dorsey is, clearly, extremely bullish on Bitcoin, but I believe that its closest rival, Ethereum, could in the near future take over as the world’s biggest and most important cryptocurrency.
“I’m noticing a huge shift towards considering Ethereum as a blockchain [the revolutionary technology that underpins cryptocurrencies] platform rather than just a cryptocurrency.
“Many companies are launching their Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), which are the cryptocurrency equivalent of IPOs, on Ethereum. In addition, the fact that it uses smart contracts makes it significantly superior to the ‘transaction based’ Bitcoin.”
The deVere CEO concludes: “Whilst I disagree with Mr Dorsey’s claim about the world having one single currency in 10 years and that it will be Bitcoin, it does underscore the growing assertion that digital currencies are here to stay and that the market is growing – despite the best efforts of financial traditionalists.
“There is a huge and growing demand for digital currencies in our increasingly digitalised world.”
Protagonist of this week's news, Alexander Nix is the executive at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook controversy surrounding political campaign influence, sly data based marketing and supposed behind-our-backs data harvesting through everyone's favourite social media platform.
In this video CEO Today delves in to the life of Alexander Nix, a very private individual, listing some hobbies, interests and much of what he's been up to to get where he is today.
Bloomberg Profiles looks at the story of Uber's Travis Kalanick and how he went from UCLA dropout to CEO of the world's most valuable technology startup.
Video by Michael Byhoff, Eric Newcomer, Brian Schildhorn and Christian Capestany.
Kicking off our June Game Changers section is an insightful interview with Seymour Ferreira, Chairman and CEO of Amber Beverage Group, a part of the SPI Group. Amber Beverage Group unites 1500 employees in eight companies across the Baltics and Mexico, including the leading producer of alcoholic beverages in Latvia an authentic tequila producer in Tequila, Mexico and experienced distribution companies in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, a specialized retail chain of 70 shops operating in Latvia and Lithuania and a logistics service company. Here, Seymour tells Finance Monthly all about the company and what differentiates it from its competitors, his role within Amber Beverage and the impact that he’s had on its performance in the past four years.
You joined Amber Beverage Group in 2013 – what were your goals in driving change within the company?
I joined Amber Beverage, which was then called the Baltic Business Unit, to manage a series of independent companies. All of these companies were independently run by their own CEOs, who had their own perceptions on how their company should operate. Although some of our products were similar, the companies did not share any commonalities in terms of business. One of the first things that I did was to understand where we were and what we’re trying to achieve. Immediately, it became clear to me that these companies didn’t share the same vision for the future, or even common values. All the companies were completely different to one another, with different focus, different ambition levels and diverse understanding of performance and measures. Therefore, the first thing we did was connected to establishing a core vision and mission - our organization values. We also worked on spreading common financial and commercial goals, as well as a very clear and structured strategy, outlining how we wanted to operate and become a more profitable and efficient company – one that would be able to sustain growth over the medium and longer term.
How would you evaluate your role and its impact over the last four years?
Change is something that I am experienced in – it is something that I will ultimately bring into any organization that I’m involved with. When I joined Amber Beverage, it was quite apparent to me that the company needed change.
This took the form of legal and structural change from the BBU to Amber Beverage Group, a holding company, which legally brought together all of its business units. This meant that we could support our strategic goal of profitable growth with appropriate organizations, infrastructure, resource and a common language. There were some basic fundamentals that had to be established. One of the first things that we focused on was building a well-founded, international standard corporate structure. Additionally, we also wanted to make sure that we had the right infrastructure –IT systems, common processes and a way of evaluating our performance across the whole business, using revenue management principles as our foundation. This involved closely looking into our organization and its procedures and making sure that we had the right people in finance, IT, and HR, and then, centralizing as many common functions and processes as possible around a core upgrade ERP system.
The overall result of implementing new procedures and processes has made the company much cheaper to run, and has allowed our core businesses, of production and distribution, to focus their energies on running their operations, without worrying about the engine room as much. As a result, we have driven our profit up, while reducing our operating costs substantiality. This has also allowed us to be able to integrate new businesses and brands, which would have been nearly impossible when I first joined Amber Beverage. We have been able to buy the Moskovskaya Vodka brand, a tequila factory in Mexico, a wine company in Latvia, and a shareholding in a UK PLC, which will allow us to extend our footprint and over time, integrate that into our business too.
Overall, I’d say that thus far we have been able to successfully strengthen the core of the business and the company which in turn has allowed us to expand its presence outside of the Baltics.
What further goals are you currently working towards with the company and what is your vision for the future of Amber Beverage?
Broadly speaking, our mission for the future is to double our Ebitda, partly by focusing on making our operations in the Baltics more efficient. These countries’ declining population and rapidly changing tax and environmental situations mean that overall volumes within this market will get smaller in time. However, whilst we will continue to focus on being efficient in the region, we are also focusing on investing in our global portfolio to support our overall goal of driving international expansion. Our recently improved export team and our strategic marketing team are good illustrations of that. Of course, we will also continue to consider mergers and acquisitions in general.
What are some of the challenges that you are faced with as a CEO of Amber Beverage?
The main challenge that we are faced with is making sure that every company that is part of Amber Beverage continues to share the same vision. We are very focused on achieving our growth targets and consumer and client goals, which involves effective communication, regular reviews across all companies and across all markets. So my main day-to-day challenge is to constantly make sure that communication level is kept at the highest, and to be involved with our excellent teams in the details of our key projects and activities. All of this needs to be balanced with the needs of all different aspects of the organization - whether it will be our retail business, logistics business, production business, distribution, etc.
We are still trying to grow our top and bottom lines, in the rapidly changing environments in the Baltics, where recent changes to legislation and taxation are putting pressure on our production and distribution companies and which is something that we are continuously having to evolve around, without losing our core ambition to deliver excellence in everything we do. In America and Mexico, we have the challenge of increasing prices of raw materials and goods, whilst still meeting customer expectations. This means having to be ready to review, evaluate and change within our core strategy all of the time, having a team capable of this is part of any leadership challenge.
As I mentioned before, it is part of our mission to deliver excellence in whatever we do and that flows through the whole organization. As a CEO, you have to keep your eye on the numbers, you have to make sure that all those projects and plans are delivered against the time table, but you also have to make sure that your whole strategy is consistently being delivered.
Amber Beverage is the largest player in the alcohol industry in the Baltics – what differentiates the company from its competitors? What do you do to ensure that you are one step ahead of other beverage companies in the region?
Our strategy in the past 2-3 years has been very clear – our goal is to grow significantly, to be internationally recognized, but also to grow our base, our profitability, and our capabilities way beyond our local borders – the first thing that differentiates us from our competitors. The second is that in our production business, Latvijas Balzams, where we are proudly able to trace our expertise back to 1752 (the year when the Riga Black Balsam bitter was created) and have been manufacturing on the same sight at Caka Street for over 110 years. We have the highest standards of quality and production execution, illustrated perhaps more eloquently by the Stolichnaya Brand.
Thirdly, we take big leaps - we are the first Baltics Company to invest in Mexico - not only in the beverage industry, but also in any industry. It was a big, bold move, which perfectly highlights the kind of company that we are. What truly differentiates us from our competitors is the fact that we think very broadly, very internationally, and that we are constantly looking at how we can improve everything that we do. That means not only bringing new talents in, but building in-house talent through training and development. We have a substantial portfolio and we are able to manage it because we have exceptional people, exceptional processes and a really well-developed support structure. This combinations means that we can outperform, outpace and outcompete our competitors, in most cases. In Amber Beverage, there is a constant improvement – we never stay still.
The first Game Changer that Finance Monthly talked to this month is a CEO with a proven track record in FMCG businesses, former FTSE 100 Director and an international working experience. Stewart Hainsworth has been the Chief Executive Officer of the largest independent drinks company in the UK by volume, which manufactures and sells in 88 countries across the globe – Halewood Wines and Spirits, for nearly two years. In his interview with us, Stewart tells us more about the company that is famous for its Lambrini and Crabbie’s Ginger Beer brands and his vision for its future.
Could you tell Finance Monthly more about Halewood Wines and Spirits and its ethics?
Halewood Wines & Spirits is the UK’s largest independent alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks manufacturer and distributor. The company’s goal is to create a unique portfolio of craft products with strong local provenance in the beer, wine and spirit categories whilst providing the trade and consumer a point of difference from mainstream brands.
Halewood is expanding and now employs over 1,000 people worldwide, more than 50% based in the North West including 325 employees at its Liverpool Gin Distillery Headquarters, a thirty-acre facility based in Huyton, Liverpool, capable of producing 20m cases. Halewood’s executive team also benefit from the company’s London office in Mayfair.
The business remains family-owned since its creation by local entrepreneur, John Halewood in 1978 and has retained an active role in community-related activity, sponsoring local and national sporting events and raising stars in boxing and motor racing.
Halewood is a medium-sized company and modest compared to its large international competitors but it continues to “fly the flag” for the UK drinks industry internationally, with operations in Romania, South Africa and China. The company exports in over 90 markets worldwide, including significant volumes in North America and Australia.
Halewood provides full manufacturing capability from distilling, bottling and distribution of craft brands at different price points including Liverpool Gin and Vodka, Whitley Neill Gin, Willow Mineral Water, Hyperion wine, Hawkshead Windermere Pale, Crabbie’s Alcoholic Ginger Beer, Lambrini and Red Square Vodka. Liverpool Gin Distillery works in conjunction with H&A Prestige (a Halewood subsidiary based in Chorley) that is a specialist bottling operation providing the industry a range of innovative bottling and packaging designs for both its alcoholic and non-alcoholic brands.
The UK domestic business accounts for 45% of profitability with a growing presence in the supermarkets, small shops and Horeca (Hotels, Restaurants and Catering). The company is focused on growing core brand exports, whilst driving sales for its Agency brands: Tequila Rose, Carlsberg, Lheraud and Tsingtao through its international operations.
Halewood demonstrates a genuine commitment to communities in its brand activities. 2016 was the third year of Crabbie’s sponsorship of the Grand National, and signifies Halewood’s continued association with Aintree, dating back to the 1990s. As well as providing an unrivalled platform to promote and sample Crabbie’s Alcoholic Ginger Beer, the sponsorship has allowed Halewood to support the prime event of the Liverpool sporting calendar.
Crabbie’s is supporting rugby at all levels of the game throughout the UK – from sponsorship of Scottish and Welsh Rugby Union, St Helen’s Rugby League, through to supporting local players and clubs at grassroots level. The company also supports local community activities including Liverpool Football Club Foundation, Glacial Art – a company taking part in the World Ice Art Championships in Alaska – and sponsorship of Declan Jones, a racing driver from Merseyside.
What have been Halewood’s major achievements in 2016?
2016 was a challenging and busy year of re-focusing and acquisitions and it’s paid off. Halewood reported strong financial results for 2016. The business returned to growth with a profit after tax of £1.7m compared to a loss of £9.5m in 2015.
The positive results follow a restructuring of the business, focus on core brands and rationalisation of non-performing brands in conjunction with a rapid inorganic growth strategy to improve the product portfolio. The introduction of a new highly-experienced spirits focused senior team helped develop the strategy to put premium craft products at the helm, alongside substantial investment in distilling, manufacturing, brand marketing and distribution.
The results of the new strategy are paying off. In 2016 the business launched a significant number of new brands, including Marylebone Gin and the J.J. Whitley range of gins and vodkas, which are inspired by the British countryside.
Development of new products also includes the expansion of the premium Whitley Neill range, with a Blood Orange Vodka “a quintessential Sicilian flavour”, Quince Gin, “the first in the UK” and Rhubarb and Ginger gin to build on gin’s huge popularity with consumers.
The success of these products has resulted in further investment in the Huyton facility, where the whole range of Whitley Neill will be produced and bottled in the near future.
Demonstrating continual improvement, existing brands including Red Square, Belgravia, Admiral Benbow and Jules Clairon have been revised too.
A number of Halewood brands won industry awards, including at The Grocer Drinks Awards, where Crabbie’s won the ginger beer of the year category alongside the Hot Brands award achieved in the USA. West Cork Distillery was voted best craft distillery in New York with its West Cork brand and Rum Sixty Six won a Gold award at the Spirits Business awards.
Could you tell us about any successful deals that Halewood has been involved in?
Halewood Wines & Spirits has made several major acquisitions in the recent past, including the purchase of a major stake in West Cork Distillers, to jointly develop and distribute its innovative Irish whiskey portfolio throughout domestic and international markets.
Halewood has purchased joint ownership of The Pogues Irish Whiskey, a joint venture with the iconic Celtic punk band and the business has also acquired Rum Sixty Six, a premium Bajan rum.
Most recently, Halewood made a significant investment in Hawkshead Brewery in the Lake District, as the business moves into the craft beer category for the first time and further strengthens its presence in the North West.
Another significant recent acquisition for Halewood is the super-premium organic craft spirit, Liverpool Gin. Liverpool Gin has been transformational for the business culture and direction in the business strategy. It has encouraged the whole workforce to engage with the brand and be proud of what they create.
Liverpool Gin has stayed true to its roots as an organic gin that is distilled and bottled in Liverpool driving significant investment in the Merseyside site, with new stills and specialised spirit bottling lines.
To capitalise on increasing consumer interest in “drinking less, but higher quality products”, Halewood has expanded the Liverpool Gin brand by launching the Liverpool Collection – a craft spirits range which includes Liverpool Gin Valencian Orange, Liverpool Rose Gin and Liverpool Vodka, as well as special editions of Liverpool Gin Distillers Cut, a 16-year-old Trinidadian rum and a 12-year-old whisky.
The launch of the Liverpool Collection has allowed Halewood to form a partnership with one of Liverpool’s most iconic names – Liverpool FC. The partnership with Liverpool FC creates a platform for Halewood to expand its presence and brand awareness within international markets, in association with one of the largest brands in world football.
Halewood’s latest strategic investment is in The City of London Distillery, the only gin distillery in London’s Square Mile. The deal will enable the micro-distillery to further capitalise on the gin renaissance by gaining new routes to market, as well as reinforcing Halewood’s firm focus on premium craft spirits.
The acquisitions have strengthened Halewood’s product portfolio in priority categories of craft beer, Irish whiskey, gin and vodka.
Looking into the rest of 2017 and beyond, what does the future hold for the company?
Halewood Wines & Spirits will remain focused on driving sales of core brands on a global basis, whilst further investing in craft products in new and existing facilities. The company wants to move closer to the consumer and develop new channels and routes to market. Engaging with the customer is important in the evolution of the company to identify new trends.
The company will continue to invest in liquid development, particularly through its Liverpool Gin Distillery, Hawkshead Brewery, Aber Falls Distillery and pending plans for a new John Crabbie’s Distillery in Scotland.
Halewood's export drive will be championed by notable brands including Whitley Neill Gin, The Pogues Irish Whiskey and Liverpool Vodka, with consumer marketing support through key export markets.
The Liverpool Collection is a key aspect of this activity, both in terms of increasing listings of the Liverpool Collection brands within the UK On Trade, but also seeking out opportunities to promote the city’s brand wherever possible.
Halewood will be weaving the brand story of Liverpool into its marketing campaigns – the launch of Liverpool Rum within the collection provides Halewood with a platform to tell the story of Liverpool, the docks and the city’s history with rum.
The partnership with Liverpool FC has only just commenced, so we are looking forward to deepening this relationship. Halewood’s sponsorship of the Liverpool FC Foundation will undoubtedly generate further opportunities for community engagement.
Halewood will continue to support local businesses and initiatives – as the headline sponsor of the British Style Collective, which takes place in Liverpool, and supporting the Liverpool Summer of Love event in its 50th anniversary this year.
Halewood also plans to be putting greater emphasis on the strong provenance of its North West based brands, such as Willow Water and Hawkshead Brewery, in order to strengthen their appeal and drive further growth.
The Aber Falls Distillery will start to come to fruition, and Halewood has plans to launch a visitor centre, tours and distilling classes to engage consumers.
Halewood expects to see consumer interest and growth in premium spirits to continue throughout 2017, so hopefully our spirit brands to remain relevant and popular.
Consumers have developed a keen interest in craft distilling, and Halewood will also be exploring opportunities to allow smaller businesses to access the market through our portfolio offering.
Last but not least, Halewood expects rum and Irish whiskey to grow in popularity this year, and the business is well-placed to take advantage of these trends, through the expansion of the Rum Sixty-Six range and further Irish whiskey distribution in collaboration with West Cork Distillers.
Email: stewart.hainsworth@halewood-int.com
Halewood Wines & Spirits
The Liverpool GinDistillery, Wilson Road, HuytonBusiness
Park,
Liverpool, L36 6AD, UK
0151 480 8800
Website: www.halewood-int.com
With CEO’s citing growth as top priority for the coming years, CFOs are to be strongly impacted. Finance Monthly here benefits from an exclusive outlook on the future of CFOs by Mark Nittler, VP Enterprise Strategy at Workday, who discusses the changing role of finance and how CFOs can better prepare themselves for the future.
The role of the CFO is going through a period of significant change. It’s no longer just a numbers game, but CEOs are calling on the finance team to play a bigger role in decision-making, technology, and data governance.
CFOs need to ensure they’re ready for such major levels of change, which are only exacerbated further by an intensely competitive digital business landscape. And despite CFOs now needing a more strategic approach to decision making, recent research suggests that many still rely on gut feel rather than hard data. Many also admit they neglect innovation and process improvement, and have not mastered how to manage and analyse the volume and variety of business data available to them.
So what are the business priorities impacting the focus of the finance function? This article looks at how CFOs can best prepare themselves – and their teams – to become a more strategic partner able to meet the changing needs of a modern organisation.
Multiple growth strategies
It will come as no surprise that many CEOs cite growth as their top priority for the next three years, a move set to strongly impact the CFO. It’s now expected that CFOs will play a core part in driving growth strategies across the company, which makes good business sense given the insight they have into every part of the organisation.
This growth will be the result of numerous different approaches – from organic growth to geographic expansion and acquisition – so the CFO will need to drive multiple growth strategies. In today’s dynamic business environment this will be no easy task, but it’s vital CFOs embrace this new role, supporting the CEO in the pursuit of growth and becoming a strategic partner to the business.
Regulation, regulation, regulation
The CFO has an important part to play when it comes to the regulatory environment. This not only applies when considering how to adapt to new regulations but also to ascertain where the potential value lies for the business. CFOs have the ‘big picture’ view and should look at incoming regulation beyond the core issue of compliance – how these could potentially provide more insights into the business or streamline additional processes, for example.
One example here comes from the changing reporting requirements within financial services. These requirements led to more standardisation across the industry, and a new focus on building data-warehouse environments to meet these regulations. For many organisations, this actually presents an opportunity to better understand the company’s data and in turn grow the business.
CFO decision making
Modern businesses are under constant pressure to operate quickly and efficiently, and CEOs are demanding more real-time data from their CFOs in order to make the best possible decisions. In turn, they’re looking for analysis and insights from the finance function, as well as guidance on future strategy.
As a result, the finance organisation will need to spend more time on insights and analysis, and less time on processing transactions than it has done in the past. Looking at historical data alone is no longer enough. Finance now needs a holistic view of the business, combining various streams of live and historical data, if they’re to better understand the business as a whole. They will then be able to provide insights into how various parts of the business – such as HR and finance – impact each other, and advise on future strategies based on these insights.
Ongoing transformation
A recent KPMG report found that one in three CEOs see experience with transformation as one of the top attributes for a CFO. And with business leaders focused on beating the competition and ensuring their products or services stay ahead of the curve, the pressure is on for CFOs to support in business innovation and transformation efforts.
Organisations are being disrupted from all sides, whether it’s changing consumer demands, new regulation coming into effect, or innovative competitors coming onto the scene. This also comes largely from changes within specific industries – from the growth of omnichannel in retail to the evolution of connectivity in the automotive industry.
These changes often push businesses to innovate if they’re to remain competitive and continue to grow, and the CFO can support considerably on this journey. The CFO and finance team can identify growth opportunities and inform key business decisions by providing the relevant insights and data they have access to. The finance function should also be able to scale quickly – entering new markets, for example – in order to support certain areas of growth.
The current burden of transaction processing and audit and control tasks felt by many finance teams leaves little room for strategic partnership and the ability to influence decision-making. As such, it’s vital that organisations across the globe embrace new ways of thinking about the role of finance in today’s highly disruptive business landscape, and that CFOs keep these considerations front of mind if they are to be successful with new future growth strategies.
Over the past year, and in recent news, we’ve seen a consensus that the pay of corporate executives is ‘too high’, and investors, fund managers and shareholders are increasingly ready to take firm action against plans to boost the remuneration of top bosses.
More recently, David Cumming, Head of Equities at Standard Life, a UK investment firm, said his company "could not justify" pay going any higher. He told the BBC that investors must do more to signal their unhappiness.
"We continue to see too many proposals that would bring a substantial increase [in pay], and we have to signal that we are not happy with that,” he said.
This week, Finance Monthly’s Your Thoughts looks closer at this topic, and hears the views of Martin Pratt, Partner in the Employment Law Team at Gordon Dadds, surrounding the matter.
The High Pay Centre think-tank calculated that the median FTSE 100 CEO had managed to clock up the £28,200 2017 UK average earnings by lunchtime on Wednesday 4th January 2017. A week later Blackrock wrote to public company chiefs threatening to veto excessive pay or pension proposals. This month, top Standard Life fund manager David Cumming said that his firm “could not justify” top executive pay going any higher. Theresa May’s government has issued a Green Paper with ideas to curb it.
That there is a problem with unjustifiable pay inequality between those at the top and those at the bottom of our largest companies, now seems widely accepted. What is not so widely agreed upon is what to do about it.
When launching her campaign for the Conservative Party leadership last July, Theresa May put forward one surprisingly, and ironically, European proposal to deal with the issue - workers representation on boards.
The proposal for workers in the boardroom, German style, was notably absent from November’s Green Paper on the topic. Another proposal touted at May’s leadership launch, binding shareholder votes on remuneration, was actually introduced by the coalition in 2013 for listed companies, with a requirement for a vote on pay policies every three years. The Green Paper suggests that since 2013, not a single FTSE 100 remuneration policy has been rejected by shareholders. That is not a great advert for shareholder activism. Perhaps shareholders have not, thus far, agreed with the consensus that executive pay is problematic.
The comments by Blackrock and others mean executive pay proposals may not get an easy ride from institutional investors next time. But that is not certain. The Green Paper makes proposals making shareholder oversight more meaningful, but the fragmented membership of listed companies makes concerted shareholder action to curb pay difficult.
The Green Paper makes much of a transparency requirement – forcing companies to publish the differential between their highest and lowest paid employees. This “name and shame” approach seems to rely upon the idea that companies will be so embarrassed by the pay gap between top and bottom that they will do something about it. That is, at best, a speculative assumption. At worst it will stoke the fires of resentment and negativity about corporate “fat cats” without actually dealing with the underlying problem.
All of the policy solutions put forward thus far are tinkering around the edges. If the government genuinely believes there to be a problem, then radical measures are needed to address it. The traditional method of ensuring that the highly paid contribute to the common good is via taxation. That is an anathema to any Conservative administration, but it would at least have the benefit of adding to public coffers, which simply putting an upper cap on salaries, as proposed by Labour, would not.
Or perhaps we are approaching this from the wrong angle. Instead of pushing down the salaries of the highest paid, more attention could be paid to pushing up those of the lowest?
We would also love to hear Your Thoughts on this, so feel free to comment below and tell us what you think!
Medical doctors with executive roles in medical device start-ups can hinder innovation, finds new research from UCL School of Management and Stanford University, but have a positive impact if they are inventors or board members.
The study, accepted for publication in the Academy of Management Journal and funded by InHealth, looked at 231 US surgical instrument ventures over a 25 year period and found that companies achieved more patents and FDA product approvals when they employed medical professionals in technical or governance (board) roles.
Despite frequent involvement in executive roles, the researchers found that doctors are likely to block innovation as CEOs because they stick to familiar products and technologies rather than exploring new ideas. On average, companies with non-doctor CEOs secured one more product approval per year than those with doctor CEOs.
“As inventors, doctors’ professional experience helps transform inventive ideas into products. This information helps develop a product that better fits the customer, often tapping into relevant networks and assisting in positioning the product,” said Professor Thatchenkery.
“Placing the right people in the right roles is key to success. We recommend that start-up companies hire doctors in technology roles early on and appoint them to governance roles as the company becomes more established.”
Currently, only 20% of technologies that underlie medical devices are developed by or with professional end-users, such as doctors, and recent legislative efforts in the US have sought to reduce the involvement of doctors even further to reduce conflicts of interest.
The researchers state that separating the involvement of professional users, such as doctors, from company innovation would hinder the development of lifesaving surgical instruments produced by young firms. They warn that the recent legislative changes in the US show no appreciation for the doctors working as inventors and a more nuanced policy that acknowledges their key role in product development would help sustain innovation.
(Source: UCL)
Finance Monthly Magazine is pleased to announce that its 2016 CEO Awards edition has now been published.
Every year Finance Monthly CEO Awards celebrate the success, innovation and strategic vision of CEOs across a wide variety of sectors and industries globally.
Finance Monthly’s research department has spent the past several months carefully researching and identifying some of the most outstanding, ambitious and forward-thinking CEOs in the corporate world today. As a final result, we are excited to present you a publication detailing senior individuals who have been instrumental in achieving their companies’ desired aims and driving their businesses forward.
Editor-in-chief, Mark Palmer commented: “It is vital for every business striving for success to have a leader whose diligence, innovative thinking and ingenuity inspire their team to demonstrate the same qualities and achieve excellence. We are happy that all of the individuals that are listed within Finance Monthly’s 2016 CEO Awards are corporate leaders who aspire to these qualities and whose enthusiasm and hard work help their companies successfully accomplish their goals.”
Winners this year include Marc Bell from Benenden Health, Steve Parker from Quantum Imaging, Robin von Heim from Simplesurance GmBH and Peter Alderson from LDF, among others.
Finance Monthly would like to thank all contributors and participants in the 2016 CEO Awards. Congratulations to our winners and finalists.
To view the awards publication please visit: http://ceoawards.finance-monthly.com/
