In brief
At Danone, Erik held global finance leadership roles across productivity, commercial finance, data, digital and performance management. He delivered €400m+ indirect spend savings through global Zero-Based Budgeting, overdelivering target by €50m.
Situation
Danone required finance leadership across global functions, commercial categories and transformation programmes in a large, matrixed and multi-country environment.
What changed
- Led global Zero-Based Budgeting for Specialized Nutrition and delivered €400m+ indirect spend savings.
- Acted as senior finance leader at N-1 level across a €7bn+ net sales, multi-category P&L.
- Led global finance for data and digital transformation, unified data foundations, harmonised KPI frameworks and performance dashboards.
- Partnered with global commercial and category leadership on strategy, capital allocation and innovation portfolio.
Outcome
The case demonstrates CFO-1 leadership in a multinational context: aligning finance, performance management, data and commercial decisions across large-scale, matrixed complexity.
Relevance for CFO mandates
This case is most relevant for larger businesses where the CFO must operate across complexity: global stakeholders, data foundations, commercial choices, productivity and performance management.