In acquisition-led businesses, value is created or lost against the deal thesis, often within the first six to twelve months. Reliable financial reporting early is what lets you understand the business and track performance against that thesis with confidence, and it has to be repeatable at scale as further acquisitions follow.
As Group CFO of a private equity-backed defense industrial business, I stepped into an organization that had recently completed its third acquisition and was preparing for another. Operations spanned three states, three accounting systems, two manufacturing execution systems, and several distinct finance processes. The immediate requirement was not system transformation. It was speed to financial clarity.
The lender expectations were already in place: quarterly reporting, covenant compliance, budgets, forecasts, headcount reporting, and operational KPIs. Mezzanine financing had been raised before my arrival, but none of the required reporting had been fully established. The accounting team was capable and committed, though the finance function had not yet been built to support group consolidations, intercompany eliminations, structured forecasting, or a disciplined, synchronized month-end close.
Before you can implement any system, you need numbers you can stand behind. So the first six weeks went into building that foundation by hand. I started by defining a single corporate chart of accounts to act as the group’s shared structure, then mapped each entity’s source ledger to it line by line. From there the work was deliberate and unglamorous. Payroll structures had to be aligned, intercompany activity identified and eliminated, and every balance tied back to the prior tax and statutory numbers so there was continuity a lender could trust. The result was a full group consolidation model in Excel, transparent enough that anyone could follow the logic from source ledger to consolidated result.
That model did two things at once. It gave immediate visibility into group performance, and it became the baseline for FP&A systems that would allow us to measure performance against the deal thesis. Just as important, it was a deep dive into the weeds, so was an excellent opportunity to understand each business unit and the people.
In parallel, we ran a structured vendor search for an FP&A platform, and I brought a recommendation to the Board. We selected Planful at the first quarterly board meeting on the strength of their implementation credibility and cost effectiveness for a group approaching 300 people. The Planful implementation team were genuinely excellent. They had clearly done this many times in acquisitive, mid-market environments, they understood the constraints of a lean finance team, and they shaped the stand-up around our capabilities rather than forcing us onto theirs. Because we had already proven the consolidation manually, the build was fast. We carried a model we trusted into a tool that automated it.
Within ten weeks we had professional and repeatable reporting in place. Group consolidation, budgeting, forecasting, and management reporting were fully operational and owned by a finance team of four.
Just as importantly, we established cadence. The business had previously relied on ad hoc reporting and an annual, tax-driven close. Within four months we implemented a monthly close by Day 25, improving to Day 15 after the first full quarter-end cycle. That was the inflection point. For the first time the business could measure performance against its deal thesis with consistency and confidence.
Covenant reporting was delivered in full and on schedule, and the same framework supported the integration of a subsequent acquisition without loss of visibility or control. The model proved both effective and repeatable. By prioritizing speed to financial clarity over business unit systems replacement, we deferred an MES upgrade for more than 18 months, including through another acquisition, without compromising reporting quality. Capital and management focus stayed aligned to value creation.
What gets underwritten is how quickly you can prove the business is tracking to the investment thesis. The systems and how you do that are incidental, but doing it well and quickly matters a lot.
In Part 2: how this approach evolves with AI, and what actually changes.