Before you hire a CFO, find out if your business is ready for one.
On more occasions than we can remember, the business is growing well, PE are knocking on the door, and it feels like a high-flying CFO is the answer. But you don't know where to start looking. You probably have a very capable head of finance, who's pushed hard and knows you and the business like the back of their hand. But they've reached a ceiling, and the only person who can unlock what's next is somebody who has been there and done it. We have. Scaling a finance team from scratch and eventually selling to private equity, working within a listed business, and being in the boardroom for the last 15+ years has taught us a few lessons.
"How many times have you heard: you don't know what you don't know?"
There's a strong chance you'll find a CFO who wants £200k+ a year, and pay a recruiter £50k for the pleasure of finding them. Both are well within their rights to charge this, and they're worth it, but is that what your business really needs? So you appoint a CFO and expect them to change your world overnight. Depending on what they walk into, we wouldn't expect that to happen. You're appointing a CFO to give you what you don't currently have: a strong board pack, regular KPIs from a reporting tool like Power BI, a control environment akin to a listed business, a sounding board, and someone to keep score across other departments. None of that happens overnight, and we're here to tell you why, what you need, and when you can expect to see results. You may not want to hear the truth, but it will save you a great deal of time and money if you do, and act on it.
No nonsense. No fluff. We'll tell you what we actually find, not what's easiest to hear.
A straight answer on whether, and what kind of, CFO your business actually needs.
Most £30m–£60m turnover businesses we meet have a loyal head of finance who's taken them this far but can't take them further, systems that are held together with effort rather than design, and a leadership team with no time and no agreement on what to prioritise.
Hiring a high-flying CFO into that situation doesn't fix it. It just puts an expensive person in the middle of the mess, watching the same problems play out. We've been that CFO. We've made it work and have the accolades that go with it, but we also carry the scars from poor decision-making and paralysis when a business wasn't ready.
The Review answers the question first: is your business set up to benefit from a CFO right now, and if so, what type of CFO (fractional, interim, or a different fix altogether)? Every enquiry is completely confidential, and it's led by an FCA qualified CFO, not a salesperson.
- A day with your head of finance: team structure, systems, processes, reporting packs
- Half a day with you: strategy, plan, and your biggest frustration, in your words
- A review of sector, company structure, and whether you're exit-planning, consolidating, or scaling
- A written report with a direct recommendation, including if the answer is "not yet"
"We know within days whether finance is an asset or a liability (excuse the pun), and exactly what it takes to turn one into the other."ClearNrth
Where the Review can lead, over time, not all at once
Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is a finance team. The Review tells us what's needed and in what order. Nothing below is sold up front.
Finance team transformation
Most finance teams have been kept lean, which is chicken and egg. You can't get what you need from them, and they can't complete projects because they're stuck in business-as-usual with no time to lift their head. So you don't invest further, because you don't yet have the confidence to. Breaking that cycle takes coaching, new ideas, and a track record that rebuilds trust, not a reorg memo. It doesn't happen overnight, but every fix starts somewhere, or the house of cards collapses.
Board and KPI reporting
Often the quickest win, once the team has the headroom to deliver it: seeing who and what is winning, incentivising and rewarding the people driving performance, and knowing exactly where value is being created. If there's no scalable ERP, no data warehouse, and too many leaky buckets to fix, this won't happen overnight either, but it's usually where momentum starts.
Governance
There's no point using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We want to get this right, not bury the business in bureaucracy too soon. The company got here because the founder or CEO pulled up trees, and we're not going to wrap that in red tape. But a proper control environment avoids wasted cost, gets decisions made at the right level, and mitigates risk. If you're pre-exit, that means securing the back door. If you're post-fundraise, it means introducing the right policies at the right time, not all of them at once.
The CEO–CFO relationship itself
Everything above ladders up to value for you as CEO. But we're also there for your CFO, coaching and mentoring them so they can actually deliver, hold their own in the room, and become the trusted partner you need. Most finance problems are trust problems, and that runs both ways.
Fundraising
Strengthening cashflow and funding readiness, building investor-grade reporting your numbers can stand behind, and shaping a credible, data-backed equity story, so you're raising from a position of control, not catching up mid-process.
M&A, buying and selling
We've been part of a lot of M&A, buying and selling, overseas and domestic, large and small. From developing pre-acquisition plans that encompass funding, advisors, and completion mechanics, to post-acquisition plans that deal with consolidation, integration, and capitalising on the synergies.
We understand the issues. We know how long it should take to fix them, and which people and systems it takes to do it. You want to run the business and keep doing what got you here. Let us help resolve what's holding you back, and give you an unfettered view on how to move forward.