Adrian Campbell has built a wide-ranging Finance and financial management career across sectors as diverse as professional services, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, biotech, and hospitality, in organisations at all stages of business growth.

This FCA-qualified CFO and FD, with a background in science and engineering, is highly analytical, but also has a proven track record of robustly driving transformation across business models, systems, reporting, and team structures.

Hands-on and pragmatic, with a knack for helping non-specialists understand Finance fundamentals, business plans, and their importance to the business, Adrian has developed an approach that keeps communication simple, giving a high-level view in five bullet points or fewer, and actively encouraging questions.
 

This jargon-free doctrine has also stood Adrian in good stead for his international work with linguistically and culturally diverse teams from Europe and Asia and has enabled him to create effective Finance training to upskill and develop teams and help them perform more productively.

But Adrian is also resolutely focused on optimising commercial and financial outcomes. His primary goal is always to understand the business and its vision in depth, and then align key Finance controls and activities – resource allocation, cash flow forecasts, systems and process improvements – to deliver better.

Adrian’s varied career has seen him gain significant experience across many areas that will enable him, as an outsourced Finance Director, to deliver real value to EFM’s clients. Just a few examples of these from his career include:

• Strategic business planning: Leading the financial execution for short- and long-term goals; developing strengthened insight and analysis to highlight and address challenges and opportunities, at the Board level.
• Cost and risk reduction: Cutting capital expenditure by as much as $20 million; saving $11 million per year through business transformation initiatives; reducing financial and management risk through insurance and outsourcing payroll.
• Revenue and profit growth: Supporting top-line revenue growth of 181% through new product launches, new country entries and M&A activity; increasing profits by $1 million a year by restructuring a third-party promotion arrangement.
• Strengthening systems and teams: Overhauling financial analysis, insights generation, and FP&A team performance by implementing new planning and reporting systems.
• Steering and funding expansion: delivering strategic financial support for international expansion and infrastructure build initiatives.
• Communication and teambuilding: creating and developing high-performance Finance teams of up to 80 people; coaching a multi-national team of 28 FDs; simplifying and delivering Finance communication from junior employees to C-suite.

• ‘Big Four’ accountancy background, with sector experience in professional services, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, biotech, and hospitality.
• Proven track record of business transformation.
• Skilled in strategic planning, budgeting, and forecasting.
• Adept at team building and communicating complex Finance information at all business levels.
• Experienced in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and post-M&A integration.

An international biotech innovator was eyeing growth and expansion in Europe but needed an effective Finance strategy that would both maximise reach and optimise return.

Adrian worked with the business’s commercial specialists to create a financial strategy that would fund and drive new product launches and new country entries, resulting in a 69% top-line growth in company revenue.

A sports devotee, Adrian loves watching (and earlier in his career loved playing) football, rugby, and table tennis, and he is also a practitioner of the Shotokan style of karate.

Walking his dog and listening to music helps him unwind, and as a former hospitality industry -finance manager, he enjoys socialising in pubs now and again!