Cafepoint

Cafepoint supplies, installs and services coffee machines, water dispensers and vending machines for offices in London and around the UK. I joined part-time in February 2023 to do credit control and analysis. Seven months later I was promoted to lead its digital transformation, and I did that until I finished my degree.

I rebuilt credit control around risk. Every customer got a risk band, and chasing late invoices became automatic and depended on the band. Customers went from paying in 52 days on average to 30, the collection rate reached 96% and the bad-debt provision fell by 35%.

I wrote the three-year business case for a £75,000 ERP system and then ran the 15-week move for more than 60 users and 600 accounts.

• I interviewed more than 20 staff to find out how the work was really done, and ran more than 15 workshops on requirements and training.
• We rolled it out in phases, with trained staff in each team who helped everyone else.
• 95% of staff were trained within 12 weeks and over 90% were using it in the first month.

Closing the books each month went from 12 days to 4.

For three years I wrote the weekly pack the leadership team ran the business from, built on more than 10 Power BI dashboards. Over that time service time fell 25% and delivery costs fell 18%. I also built a 12-week cash-flow forecast that flagged when actual numbers drifted from it. Its average error was 9.1%.

I looked into using generative AI for customer service. The problem wasn’t the AI. Customer data was spread across systems that didn’t connect, and staff were wary of it. I wrote the memo recommending waiting until the data was sorted out.

I mentored five junior staff through the ERP move and afterwards, and gave the senior team a strategy briefing every month.