Meet the Team

Andy Bell

Director & Co-founder

Andy started Vanilla, along with Jason in 2009. Despite being something of an ERP ‘geek’ he is passionate about not complicating things and delivering what the client needs.  Andy likes to split his time between working with his customers on projects, running the business and supporting the Sales and Marketing functions with new business development and the occasional editorial piece.

Jason Belcher

Director & Co-founder

Jason founded Vanilla with Andy in 2009 after working on both the consultancy and industry sides of the fence. His vision for Vanilla was to provide a no-nonsense, cost effective service to users of IFS Applications and to make sure his customers get the best value from their investment.

His role now is making sure that the company grows but maintains the core principles it was founded on. He is determined that we continue to treat our customers as we did our first – like they are our only one.

Paul Massey

Non-Executive Director

Paul’s role is to guide Vanilla in creating rapid, but low-risk growth and long-term success. He is a pragmatic leader with a legacy of building thriving organisations on foundations of enjoyment and sustainability and believes that durable success begins with strong, motivated employees.  Paul brings a rich experience in people development, believing that strong and enthusiastic talent loyal to the company will always benefit a business through both growth and challenge.

He is also thoroughly seasoned in the ERP and business systems world, having spent the last twenty or more years showing how these tools can quickly optimise the potential and value of hundreds of organisations across a wide spread of different industries.

Simon Ball

Head of Operations

Mike Hollifield

Head of Technology

Mike is an innovative technical consultant, coming from a dedicated industry background he joined the Vanilla consulting team in 2017.  Mike has advanced technical ability and fantastic communication skills, allowing him to express his ideas and opinions in a clear and constructive manner to both technical and non- technical members of the businesses we work with.

In 2018 Mike was promoted to Head of Technology, taking responsibility for the development team in Vanilla as well as leading our R&D activities into new technologies.

Frazer Doe

Head of Sales

Paul Darwin

Head of Consulting

Paul is an energetic Supply Chain professional with experience working across different industry sectors including Consumer Electronics, Automotive, Distributed Power and Yellow Goods. He has significant Supply Chain and ERP experience, having worked as a Sales and Operations Planning manager including the responsibility for Supply Chain and Operational elements in a full ERP system implementation.

In 2018, Paul was promoted to Head of Consulting, taking charge of all the consulting staff within Vanilla.  He’s able to build relationships at all levels within an organisation and ensure our consulting team is working to the high standards we set.

James Powell

Lead Consultant

James is a dedicated professional with a wide range of experience in systems implementation and business improvement.  He adopts a people focussed approach to business engagement to ensure that solutions and improvements deliver sustainable business change.   James’ excellent interpersonal skills come to the fore in customer/user facing delivery tasks. James has over 14 years’ experience, Analysing, Designing, Configuring and Project Managing business systems and process improvement projects.

Piotr Swierszcz

Lead Consultant

Tim Hughes

Lead Consultant

Tim has 18 years’ experience of requirement capture, solutions design and implementation in a range of businesses. Very confident at leading workshops, analysing processes and recommending improvements. Tim quickly understands different business solutions and is comfortable building relationships across all levels of an organisation.

Tim Boulton

Senior Consultant

An enthusiastic consultant with a broad range of functional knowledge and a solid background in managing IFS full-implementation and enhancement projects. Tim has 7 years’ experience managing complex ERP projects; overseeing requirement capture, solution design, testing and business change. Confident in analysing the needs of a business and understanding quickly how they operate, Tim can recommend solutions and improvements at all levels of an organisation.

Janine Procter

Senior Consultant

Janine joined the Vanilla team in 2013 as a Senior Consultant with over ten years’ experience working with IFS Applications.  She has previous experience working in Export Logistics for an industrial and medical equipment supplier.

Maria Nikolaidou

Senior Consultant

With 13 years of international experience working within the manufacturing industry and 12 years IFS experience, Maria boasts a varied technical and manufacturing background. An IFS specialist who’s capable of handling complex assignments effectively whilst possessing the confidence to work independently or as part of a team. Maria has worked and lived across the globe and speaks five different languages.

Chris Wharton

Consultant

Chris joined Vanilla in 2017 as a business consultant after spending 10 years in the manufacturing industry as an application analyst.  He is enjoying the change in career direction which allows him to interact with clients, understand their issues and play a part in resolving them.

Kelly Breakwell

Consultant

Kelly joined Vanilla in 2019 after spending 5 years in the Scientific Research and Development Industry. She is a passionate and enthusiastic Consultant with experience of Implementations, End-User Training and Functional ERP knowledge in the following sectors; Pharmaceuticals, R&D, Food Industry, Aerospace and Engineering, Plastic Extrusion and Furniture Manufacturing. She is enjoying the change in career as this allows her to be involved in the process mapping, continuous improvement, and interactions with people entwined with business change.

George Armstrong

Graduate Consultant

George is a recent business graduate that is developing his skills in the IFS industry, allowing him to become an effective and established IFS Consultant in the future.

Lewis Moore

Graduate Consultant

Lewis is a recent graduate consultant who is currently developing his skills in IFS to be an integral member of the consulting team.

Olivia Davies

Project Administrator

Olivia joined Vanilla in 2018 as a Support Analyst.  She also manages some small to medium sized projects. She has previous experience of being an IFS customer & managing a busy IT department with a support desk so knows what customers expect.

David Robb

Project Manager

David’s previous experience was predominantly within the retail industry, where for the past 6 years he worked as a Project Manager on a large business transformation programme.  During this time David was accountable for a range of strategic IT and business change projects, with notable projects including the implementation of a new HR system, implementing new cloud based learning and recruitment systems and subsequently rolling these out to 20,000 users and harmonising delivery schedules throughout the retail and supply chain side of the business.

 David is looking forward to taking on a customer facing project management role, utilising his varied skill set in order to help Vanilla and its customers to deliver successful and value-added projects.

Kieran Garry

Project Manager

Kieran joined the Vanilla team in 2014 and in 2017 was promoted to Project Manager within the delivery term.  His role is to work closely with the customer and internal teams to manage projects through to successful completion.

Claire Valentine

Senior Support Analyst

Claire joined Vanilla’s Support Team in 2017 and as a Senior Support Analyst, enjoys solving the more complex issues that are presented to our support. She has previous experience in the Oil & Gas, Food Packaging and Pharmaceutical industries.

Claire also found and set up our Newcastle office.

Gary Warner

Technical Support Analyst

Gary joined Vanilla in 2018 as a Developer.  Gary has come from an IFS technical background where he supported a global IFS implementation.  Gary likes to resolve problem issues and is keen to learn new skills along the way

Karol Pietrzak

Support Analyst

Karol joins us from AMAG Technology where he was database analyst.   Prior to that, Karol was the finance lead for an IFS implementation.  He joins our support team as support analyst, with a focus on financials

Rachael Hinckley

Support Analyst

Rachael has been with Vanilla since October 2018 and arrived with 15 years of experience in Supply Chain/Logistics and 6 years of IFS experience. As part of the support team, Rachael thrives on investigating issues and solving customer problems

Steve Bagwell

Technical Consultant

Steve joined Vanilla in October 2019 as a Technical Consultant. He has a proven record of delivering practical business value and competitive advantage from business systems in manufacturing environments. His executive level, business leadership experience, coupled with a hands-on approach drives the transformation of business processes, data capture and delivery of business intelligence. He is a strong advocate of Lean Manufacturing principles and has the vision to surface the true value that IFS can offer to help businesses achieve world-class standards.

Neil Carter

Senior Developer

Neil joined Vanilla in 2017. He has a broad IFS application knowledge gained in the Manufacturing and Construction sectors in techno-functional roles. His Project Management background allows him to quickly understand customer requirements and interpret these to deliver user-focused technical solutions. He has a strong attention to detail and possesses an ability to learn new skills quickly.

Brandon Ellis-Cairns

Developer

Brandon joined Vanilla in 2014 as a trainee consultant.  He also helps to manage the support desk. He loves anything to do with technology and computers so this is a dream role for him as he is learning new technical and customer-facing skills.

Paul Trownson

Developer

Paul joined the Vanilla team in 2013 and has a background in computing. He works across many of our clients as part of the delivery team and is heavily involved SQL reporting and producing training documentation.

Andrew Nicholls

Developer

Andrew is a dedicated professional with a wide range of experience in the technical side of IFS ranging from Data Migrations to PL/SQL. Working within a team, Andrew has excellent communication skills at all levels, using his own initiative. His role includes using third party products, NovaCura Flow allowing customers to have a more productive ERP system. Andrew has over 5 years’ technical experience configuring business systems and process improvements.

Chris Elliston

Developer

Chris joined the technology team as a Developer in July 2019, coming from one of our old customers Thompson & Morgan, who have recently chosen to move away from IFS. He has been working with IFS since 2012 and brings a wealth of experience with him.

Ian Hannaford

Graduate Developer

Boluwarin Adedoyin

Graduate Developer

Bolu graduated in 2018 from the University of Abertay, Dundee with a degree in Computing and has joined us as a graduate developer. He has a keen interest in knowing how things work and can usually be found learning about new technology be it software or gadgets

Marc Reed

Marketing Specialist

Marc joined Vanilla in May 2019 and brings a creative outlook to the company. After excelling in the advertising, film and latterly sports industries he is now taking on the technology industry bringing a unique brand of innovation to the organisation.

Rachel Belcher

HR

Rachel joined Vanilla in 2012 as payroll clerk and is now our HR Manager and Mental Health First Aider.

Sarah Bartram-Royston

Accounts

Sarah joined Vanilla in April 2019 as an Accounts Administrator.  She previously worked for a Finance company as an IT Service Desk Coordinator for 20 years and is enjoying her change in career.