Episode 211

Colin Moss worked for more than 10 years at Mars, which produces some of the world's best-loved brands including Royal Canin, M&M’s and Snickers. In this role, he partnered with the global Finance leadership team to design to stand up the new FinTech function, strengthening the connection between Finance and IT and leading a portfolio of 40+ initiatives, establishing resource and financial management disciplines (before that he was at famed confectionary maker Cadbury). In 2025 he took the leap to set up his own business, CM Strategies working  with organisations navigating growth and complexity, helping them redesign how the finance department partners with the business and builds capability .

His message about the function of FP&A is resonant and powerful:

“One  of the ways that I've seen it described is that your business, and  leadership team is, is the “head”, and FP&A is the “neck” because FP&A is showing that team where to look. In this context, FP&A is helping what's the context we're operating in? What's the strategy that we're executing against? And what does that mean for where we focus? What do we put our attention on? And that can be showing up in what KPIs we look at, but also what processes we need to improve.?”

In this episode

• Path to creation of my own business (in a “hard to leave” business)
• Early audit roles as the foundation of my career
• My early lessons about business partnership at Cadbury and Mars 
• Lessons from global finance transformation at Mars including KPI design and management reporting
• Power of judgement in FP&A 

Find out more about CM Strategies at  www.cmstrategies.co.uk

We take a deep dive into the finances behind the agricultural and food beverage sector with Brad Mooney, Director of FP&A at California Dairies. FP&A drives success at California Dairies which produces 40 percent of California’s milk (300 family-owned and operated members ship 17billion pounds of high quality milk annually) and is a manufacturer of quality butter, fluid milk products, and milk powders (including Challenge and Danish Creamery and milk powder brand, DairyAmerica). In this episode former Marine Corps turned FP&A leader Brad Mooney talks:

• Building the plane as we flew it building FP&A
• The metrics of “Timing yield and supply”  at California Dairies 
• The Four Ps in finance building
• Effectiveness of planning  and forecasting in a supply-driven business 
• My view of FP&A Development 
• FP&A as therapist 

In our first FP&A Today episode to cover the shipping, ports and haulage sector, we look at the FP&A powering Peel Ports Group, the second largest port operator in the UK, which manages the vital gateways powering the UK. Alex Roche has built the FP&A team at Peels Ports, based in Liverpool, England, which generates £800M spread across 10 divisions. The group has invested over £1.5 billion over the past decade in advanced logistics, cranes, warehouses, and terminal upgrades. Highlights of his nearly decade time at Peel Ports include Co-building the Group's FP&A function for a £400m-EBITDA multi-site, and developing formal evaluation models for two major commercial deals totalling £100m+, enabling better-informed investment decisions and a £7.5m increase in realised deal value 

In this episode:

• The importance of volume in ports and how KPIs revolve around the metric
• M&A at Peels Port and setting up the FP&A team and building models 
• FP&A recommendations around vertical integration  with a new haulage business 
• The power of teaching others coming up in finance and accounting
• Why Simon Sinek was right and FP&A should start with why  
• Board on Peace Brigades International UK as a finance trustee 
• Two favorite Excel functions