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 B2B distribution company with more than 30 employees, a portfolio company of a private equity fund. The mandate had a defined end from the outset: a permanent CFO was to follow. At the same time a new ERP system was due to be introduced.
A mandate with a known successor is cut differently from an open vacancy. The deliverable is not presence but what keeps running afterwards without the interim: documented processes, a plan that can be rolled forward, and a person who has been brought up to speed.
Brief
Interim CFO tasked with creating a scalable finance setup, leading the system rollout on the finance side, and inducting the successor. Mandate type: CFO transition with post-merger integration.
Scope
- Building a three-year integrated financial plan
- Creating a scalable finance setup with documented processes
- Finance-side leadership of an ERP rollout
- Inducting the incoming CFO
Approach
An integrated plan links the P&L, the balance sheet and cash in one model — the precondition for a shareholder being able to run scenarios rather than only read actuals. It came before the system rollout, because an ERP implements the processes that have to be defined first.
The handover was not an end point but part of the brief: document processes as they take shape, rather than describing them at the end. The six handover packages this follows are set out in CFO handover and vacancy, and why documentation is the real quality question in interim mandates is covered in interim management in the finance function.
Result
- Integrated financial plan for 2025 to 2027 built
- Scalable finance setup with documented processes created
- ERP rollout led on the finance side
- Induction of the incoming CFO supported
Duration
Five months, January to May 2025.
Does this match your situation?
Where the successor is already known, the mandate is a handover task — the decision guide is CFO handover and vacancy. Where they are not, it is first of all a bridging question, and the models are compared in interim CFO, CFO as a Service or a permanent hire. On the system side: implementing finance software. All mandates at a glance: interim CFO references.
