Vetico’s new chief financial officer is Bob de Nijs. And he’s a very multifaceted CFO at that, since he’s also taking charge of the IT, HR and acquisitions business units. In this article, we meet Bob and hear about his vision and his plans for the coming years. While he is full of ambitions, he is also quick to say: “For me, the journey is more important than the destination.”
Tilburg resident, father of three, sports fan and lumberjack: that’s Bob in a nutshell. After starting his career at Ernst & Young, he went on to work as CFO at Beter Bed, where he eventually became director of finance & operations for the Netherlands and Belgium. Bob has also occupied management positions at Homefashion Group, parent company to businesses such as Kwantum and Leen Bakker. “Over the years, I have developed my own management philosophy”, says Bob. “It’s been a process of trial and error, of course, but I’m now able to apply that philosophy to improvement processes on behalf of Vetico.”
Three convictions
Bob’s belief is based on three core principles. “The first is building an effective team, made up of people whose characters match the company’s goals. I believe that personalities are even more important than resumes. For example, you need different types of people for innovation than for commercial growth. That brings me straight to my second principle: empowering people. Enable employees to do what they do best, and give them responsibility. Finally: focus. Focus on just one or two improvements at a time, instead of ten. That increases the quality, enhances the experience of success, and makes change more fun.”
things can happen quickly.”
Example: IT roadmap
Bob has been Vetico’s CFO for more than six months now. These first few months have gone well for him. “I love the hands-on approach here. If you have sound ideas, then things can happen quickly. Personally, I work in accordance with my philosophy. An example is the IT area, in which I want to strengthen the team so that it aligns with the IT roadmap. An important aspect of this is developing a data warehouse that unifies all of the company data, from prices to production numbers per machine. This will provide a great deal of management information and guidance options. However, we’re not quite there yet. For AI to function effectively, the data has to be clean. Before we can start working on that, we first have to come up with an ideal IT construction.”
Staying entrepreneurial
In addition to IT and finance, Bob is also responsible for HR and acquisitions. The plans for these areas arise from the corporate strategy he is developing together with his fellow management colleagues and in consultation with the Supervisory Board. “That’s coming very naturally”, says Bob. “Jeroen van Herpen, Mark van der Burgt and I complement each other perfectly, not only in terms of knowledge and experience, but also in character. Our vision for the future is based on three pillars: innovation, sustainability and growth. This collaboration will not result in some kind of massive manual, however, but a clear and dynamic document. We need to focus and define catch-all terms with clear goals and preconditions. At the same time, it’s also important for us to keep an eye on the world around us, and to maintain our enterprising approach.”
sense of ownership and develop more effectively.”
“At Champions League level”
The plans should have great results for Vetico. Bob has his own views about precisely what that means. “It would be great if we could say in ten years’ time that the company is twice as large and internationally successful. However for me, the journey is more important than the destination. Colleagues should be able to say afterwards: ‘That was cool’. And: ‘We’ve played at Champions League level with Vetico’. We will only achieve this if we set the goals and create the preconditions, without providing too many instructions. When employees are given freedom, they feel a sense of ownership and develop more effectively. And that’s when the journey gets really fun, both for Vetico and everyone else who is along for the ride.”
