With more than 30 years’ experience in senior Finance roles across sectors and business types, ranging from a boutique estate agency to a Big Four accounting firm, Jon has earned a reputation for driving change, developing people, and focusing firmly on the business fundamentals.

Proactive, with a firm belief that Finance should be valued for its central role in strengthening the business’s performance, Jon is as at home being “a Finance department of one” in startup businesses as he is building, nurturing, and leading Finance teams and project groups in larger environments. 

Developing people, optimising processes, implementing new systems, devising methods for monitoring and measuring success – these are all part of Jon’s determination to deliver continuous improvement to the business.

But he is also a savvy communicator, putting his many years of project stakeholder management to effective use to articulate “the story that the numbers tell”, whatever his audience and its level of Finance literacy.

Jon’s ability to embrace and manage change has served him well in delivering expertise across varied business environments, and this breadth of experience has also enabled him to hone the full range of skills vital to a successful FD’s gameplan.

These include:

• Leadership: Clear objective-setting; developing people through mentoring, training and role-modelling; driving a continuous improvement agenda. Implementing a Trusted Business Advisor model to enhance the perception of Finance within the business.
• Strategy: Developing and implementing strategy to successfully manage and strengthen both embryonic and larger, established Finance teams, and embrace diversity and inclusivity within them; transforming the Finance function from reactive to proactive and commercially focused.
• Cash flow maximisation: Obtaining additional funding, reviewing costs and suggested reductions, and implementing changes to income models to help see smaller businesses through difficult times.
• Business transformation, systems implementation: Leading the Finance team through a period of significant instability and uncertainty whilst implementing a major systems project; working with stakeholders to upgrade operating methods and enhance profitability. Maintaining staff morale and motivation.
• Budgeting, forecasting, and accounts: Leading teams to deliver vital Finance discipline, even through challenging cycles, wider economic difficulties, and policy pressures.
• Controlling:  Making changes to the Finance structure to optimise controlling and keep people motivated in challenging times, as part of the continuous improvement ethos.

1. Professional Services
2. Real Estate
3. Property Development

• Business Planning
• Budgeting and Forecasting
• Working Capital and Cash Flow
• Business Analysis and Modelling
• Cost Analysis and Reduction 
• Change and Stakeholder Management
• Continuous Improvement
• Business System/Process Evaluation and Implementation
• Management Reporting and KPI’s
• Board Reporting
• Finalising Statutory reporting and working with Auditors
• Financial Coaching and Training

Norwich City fan Jon also enjoys running and paddleboarding in his spare time, and he can easily make room for these hobbies thanks to EFM’s approach to working, which delivers significant time flexibility to Associates and clients alike.

Jon is a trustee of The Book Bus, a charity promoting literacy in Zambia by working with local government departments to provide books, storytelling materials and libraries for children and teachers. He is a longstanding children’s mentor and has previously been a school Governor and a trustee of a children’s cancer charity.