An anonymised case description from an actual interim CFO mandate. Sector, scale and type of shareholder are stated; the company name is not. All details come from the mandate description on the interim CFO references page. Results are not broken down by date there, so they are given here for the mandate as a whole.
Starting position
A private-equity-backed B2B SaaS company with more than 40 employees needed finance leadership during a CFO transition. Two changes were running at once: a buy-and-build programme and the move from licence revenue to recurring revenue.
Operational responsibility for the finance department therefore had to be combined with the information requirements of both the management team and the shareholder — two audiences that want different things from the same numbers.
Brief
Interim CFO with operational responsibility for the finance department. Mandate type: CFO transition with post-merger integration.
Scope
- Operational responsibility for the finance department, and sparring with management and the shareholder
- Building reporting, forecasting and a KPI system to the shareholder's standard
- Structuring the finance organisation, its processes and systems
- Finance-side support for the buy-and-build strategy and for the change of pricing model
Approach
A transition mandate and an instrument-building mandate are not the same thing, and this brief was both. Pure model building would not have covered it: the role carried responsibility for the finance organisation as well as the reporting line to the fund. How that split is settled before a mandate starts — which decisions the interim takes and which stay with management or the fund — is set out in CFO handover and vacancy.
Two questions then decide how such a mandate goes. Which reporting definitions apply across existing and newly acquired entities — the consolidation question described in consolidated accounts after buy-and-build. And how the assumptions behind a changed revenue model are made traceable in the forecast, which is what turns a pricing shift from a commercial decision into a planning one.
Result
The published mandate description records the build-out of the reporting and planning instruments and the support of both strategic programmes. No quantified improvement in EBITDA, cash or closing time is published, and none is inferred here.
- Reporting, forecasting and KPI system built to the shareholder's standard
- Finance organisation, processes and systems structured
- Buy-and-build acquisitions supported on the finance side
- Change from licence to SaaS pricing led financially
Duration
Six months.
Does this match your situation?
What a fund expects from a finance function in the opening phase is set out in the first 100 days in a PE portfolio company, and the role itself in interim CFO in private equity. Scope of work for investors: private equity. All mandates at a glance: interim CFO references.
