Interim CFO – Commercialisation for Growth Commercial - Case Study

Interim Chief Financial Officer

Sector: Commercial and Professional Services

Location: Melbourne, VIC

Our client is a professional services organisation representing 40,000 urban and rural members. For more than 50 years, the organisation has cultivated a stronger profession through delivering professional development and providing resources and guidelines for their members to use with their clients.

Led by a newly appointed CEO, the organisation replaced its Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and brought its outsourced training and examinations in-house. By the end of the 18-month change journey, the organisation had tripled in size growing employees to 1500-strong across 20+ locations. Revenues were forecast to grow from $50 million to more than $250 million over the next 6 months.

Issue:

Supported by a new SLT, the CEO uncovered the organisation had been trading at a ‘normalised’ loss over the last five years. This is not sustainable. While the group has strong managers responsible for Financial Accounting and FP&A supported by a 20-strong financial team, there was no CFO role. The group engaged EIM for an interim Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to start getting things in order while they searched for a permanent candidate to fill the newly created CFO position.

Solution:

EIM introduced an Executive with broad executive experience in complex transformations of customer-centric, service industries to partner with the CEO and provide a clear transition plan to induct the future permanent CFO.

Within days of the interview, the Interim CFO stepped in to mentor the talented finance managers and boost the finance team's capability to ensure reporting and systems could support the tripling in growth. In addition, the Interim CFO reviewed and recommended appropriate financial structures and processes to provide more relevant and timely information for the further commercialisation of the organisation.