CFO Expertise Leads to Increased Value And Successful Sale of Company Entity

How a struggling company leveraged a CFO to turn around and grow in value.

The Challenge

The Outcome

“For example, they assumed demand would be a certain number of billable hours on a yearly and monthly basis, and that number continued to drift south. This was happening partly because the operating group at the consulting level wasn’t driving towards realistic and sustainable goals.”

The first presentation Craig gave to the organization centered around how they were losing money every hour. In order for the leadership team to fully comprehend the gravity of the situation, Craig needed to be blunt and honest. After the initial shock and disbelief wore off, the team was eager to work towards the necessary changes.

EST Group went through a reorganization, and the consulting firm was spun off and sold to a different business. To facilitate the sale, they created an independent set of financial analysis and financial performance standards: profit and loss, cash flow, and income statements.

The Solution

Initially, the EST Group project was a roadmapping exercise. After evaluating their corporate structure, roles and responsibilities, compliance procedures, checks & balances, and technical A/R + A/P processes, Craig built a roadmap for the future.

First on the roadmap was annual budgeting. This workstream started with drafting, iterating upon and finalizing a revised annual budget. It also comprised building easily-updated templates at the more granular Business Unit (BU) level budgets, resulting in streamlined consolidation into overarching corporate views. Once the budgets were in place, informative reporting and KPI dashboards / ‘flash reports’ were developed.

Over the course of approximately 18 months, Craig worked with EST Group to ensure that the roadmap was followed – making adjustments as needed, ensuring deadlines were met, and aligning the team at large. He also tackled a slew of new projects and strategies as they arose.

With Craig’s leadership, a level of clarity swept across the team. Tightening up the definitions of metrics, eliminating underperformers, ironing out kinks and streamlining processes allowed the company to turn around their performance, gain more value, and ultimately led to its successful sale.