Miho Sugasawa Email Address

Controller

At Seneca, we believe that everyone deserves year-round access to great-tasting food that's also great for you.

Seneca Foods' mission is to provide nutritious, safe, and affordable fruits and vegetables to families all over the world. I feel very fortunate to serve as controller at its Sunnyside plant, where local pears, apples, and cherries are canned and bottled. I have been able to achieve various savings and improvements in recent years. In Jan 2013, Seneca purchased Independent Foods, which resulted in a promotion for me to be a plant controller, and gave me the opportunity to serve as a key person of an ERP transition into SAP financial suite from a legacy system. Immediate after Seneca’s buy-out, I was able to recruit all new department staff who are now well trained and respected. They are all rockstars who stuck around over one year of challenging transition. Our finance team has successfully closed 2-day month-ends each month from April 2013. From 2013-14, I facilitated training for staff and managers in various departments involved in purchase-to-payment process, scheduling-to-payroll process, improving the process flow and level of GAAP compliance. We improved the facility’s Internal Controls up to GAAP compliant with the public company requirements, starting from the level of a family-owned private company. We also built annual budget from ground up, and provided plan budget, revision, and true-up each year to facilitate bench-marking and prioritization of savings. One of the key projects in 2015 saved about $1M from operation efficiency. As my team and I grow more experience, I hope we continue to improve our process and find more savings for the company. It is a lot of fun!