Els Vancoillie

Your transformation partner

For almost 20 years, I was employed in commercial and marketing roles in an international context, working in manufacturing and sales & marketing organisations with retail, foodservice, wholesale and agents. I soon learnt that sales & marketing are inextricably linked to operations and that the best results are achieved when they are all aligned.

At all times during my career, I was dealing with the future: the future state of the organisation and digitalising. This involved starting up, organising, adapting, working smart with as few resources as possible, looking at feasibility, innovating.

It included projects that fell outside the day-to-day streamlined activities of the organisation, for which the vision, strategy, budget and timeline had to be sharpened and which involved new ways of working for all or part of the organisation. I had to make the systems work for me and my teams.

Over the years, I have become adept at direct and functional management of a team, active listening, managing remotely, working in multicultural environments. I get a kick out of program and stakeholder management, the more complex the better. I use analysis and synthesis to create a framework for fast and fact-based decision making, to put forward innovative solutions and to elaborate or rework processes.

Communication is everything. During my business education in Antwerp, I learnt its importance and have always given it high priority. Written or spoken, it must be relevant to the recipient.

And finally – as transition and change are at the heart of what I do – in order to remain productive, it is important that my business skills and knowledge remain current. Below is a selection of recently obtained certificates and diplomas.

It was at Vandemoortele that I learnt the ropes, where I was soon promoted to Export Manager and had the chance to start up a separate export department for frozen bakery products with a dedicated customer service team. I experienced the start-up of SAP and helped shape B2B2C sales. I introduced marketing plans and sales training for customers in retail and wholesale so that everyone on the extended sales team felt confident about the products. In a world where retail was increasingly consolidating and the number of small independents was declining, I pointed out the importance of a key account management strategy for the business unit. Afterwards, I went to the UK to set up sales of frozen bakery products to industrial customers. All in all, a good 13-year learning experience in which I dealt with all departments of an organisation, was challenged to simplify complexity and learnt to connect people from different departments and cultures to achieve a common goal.