Interim Chief Financial Officer — Integration

The calls this finance chief will have to make

Most of the choices that define an integration CFO's tenure land on the desk early, well before the two finance teams have settled into one. Which close calendar wins when two finance teams have each run their own? Which performance measures survive, and which are retired even though somebody is attached to them? In a non-profit, where any surplus exists to be reinvested rather than distributed, how hard should a commitment be tested before it is allowed to draw on that cash?

The interim CFO holds executive authority for the full 24 months. Local leaders keep whatever spending and approval limits the CFO decides they should keep; everything above comes to the centre. The CFO picks the information that governs investment and capacity and rules on each inherited commitment: carry on, wait or stop. A proposal that leaves its cost or risk unclaimed goes back to its sponsor, and an investment case that is silent on uptake, on what it relies on or on its downside does not proceed. Shaping the finance leadership team, choosing the route by which unsettled questions travel upward, and brokering disputes with operating leaders before cash is committed all sit with the CFO, who also fixes how often the board hears about progress and decisions still pending.

The hardest judgement is often about controls. Integration invites a clean sweep, but some inherited controls are doing quiet, useful work. The right person protects those, exposes what each exception actually costs, and does not mistake a tidier process for a safer one.

Two years, measured in cash and in a single close

By the end of the first ninety days, cash should have an accountable owner, the integration finance calendar should be fixed, and the performance measures the organisation will run on should be agreed, all ahead of the next planning cycle. Around month nine there should be one set of integrated cash reports and a single monthly close, with performance exceptions owned by someone and reviewed every month rather than discovered at year end. By month 24 the integration of finance should be complete, planning should run on one standard, and a finance team should be able to carry it without the interim chief in the room.

Experience that has been through a separation and a combination

Expect us to look for finance leadership across $835 million or more of revenue, a minimum of 1,800 people and seven countries. The experience weighed most heavily is carve-out, joint venture and turnaround: the situations where two sets of books, two cultures and two views of the truth have to become one. An integration tests capital allocation hardest, and that is where we look for level 4; FP&A forecasting, controls reporting and risk judgement should each sit at level 3, since a single close is built on all three.

You keep the board's story and the operating evidence in the same document, never in parallel. Your baselines have stood up to challenge from a group finance chief and from the operators who would have to live with the numbers. You leave a stronger finance bench than you found. Integration rarely wins unanimous support, and you have learnt to stop a commitment on the evidence rather than on a show of hands.

From the finance chief's call to the boardroom

In week 1 the Group Chief Financial Officer talks with you confidentially over video about the mandate and your first instincts on cash. By week 3 you are with the Audit Committee Chair, working through close, controls and exceptions together. Week 5 is face to face: executives leading each of the main functions question how your planning approach would land with the people who must live with it. The full board sees you last, in week 7. We aim to tell you in writing how each stage went within three working days.