Get a clear understanding of whether your business is ready to scale or pivot, if you track your strategy properly, and which steps you need to take to accelerate execution and avoid cash flow issues. All in 4 weeks.

If you fail to conduct a strategic financial review and align the company’s finance infrastructure with its strategy, your company may experience stagnant growth, low profitability and cash flow shortfall.

If you run a late-stage startup or a small to midsize business, you will benefit from a Strategic Financial Review if you answer “Yes” to one of the questions below:

• New funding: Have you recently raised a funding round and need to prepare your finance infrastructure for scale?
• Rapid growth: Is your company undergoing a rapid growth phase, launching new products, or expanding into new markets?
• Stagnant growth: Does your company experience stagnant revenue growth despite having a strong and unique value proposition?
• Low profitability: Does your company achieve less than optimal profitability levels despite having a proven business model?
• Pivot: Have you recently pivoted or plan to pivot your business model and need a plan that reflects both current economic realities and future expectations?

What is the focus of a Strategic Financial Review?

In my work with executives and founders, I see six most common issues companies face in their strategic planning. These issues make it harder for executives to make business decisions and achieve desired financial outcomes. In our review we identify if these or other issues are present and make recommendations on how to address them.

1. Sales strategy not in sync with the resulting financial forecast
   • Setting financial goals without fully understanding how they can be achieved
   • Not knowing how to change your strategy to achieve a different outcome
2. Not fully accounting for how growth or shut-down of certain products will impact operations
3. Inefficient cost structure
   • Duplicate costs across business lines or high-cost legacy contracts
4. Not properly understanding sources and uses of cash
   • Specifically, not considering working capital and the resulting liquidity needs, especially in periods of pivoting or expansion
5. Overlooking or incorrectly tracking relevant KPIs
   • Leading to distorted picture of profitability of certain business lines or information being missed completely
   • Not reacting timely to market feedback
6. Suboptimal financing structure
   • Entering into debt or equity agreements without understanding all the constraints and obligations

During this month-long engagement, we will help you to:

• Evaluate which parts of your strategy are working or not, and understand the root causes of your under or over-performance.
• Quickly react to market feedback.
• Have a clear and transparent roadmap of your strategy which aligns the expectations of all stakeholders: investors, management, strategic partners, and employees.
• Evaluate the feasibility of your business goals and understand capital requirements and a timeline for achieving them.
• Create an executable path to profitability aligned with your strategy as well as capital, labor, regulatory, and product development constraints.

Process:

Phase I: Information intake includes analysis and review of:

• Historical financial performance for up to 3 years
• Strategic and sales plans, including plans to raise capital
• Financial model audit
• Outstanding debt, equity and vendor agreements
• Systems being used to track data and how they are integrated with each other
• Current reporting process – KPI dashboard
• Cost audit

Phase II: Conversations with stakeholders

• Five 90-minute interviews with the company’s management team discussing the findings from Phase I and issues they currently face. We suggest CEO, CFO or the head of the finance team, CRO or the head of the sales team, COO or the head of operations, and CTO or the head of product.
  • If some executives perform several functions, two interviews with the same executive with a different focus can be conducted instead.
  • Questionnaires will be provided to each executive based on findings from Phase I to help them prepare for those interviews and to collect the necessary information.

Deliverable: An executable roadmap which includes recommendations on

• How to refine the financial model to bring it in sync with the sales strategy and resulting impact on operations and HR
• How to enhance the financial reporting process to provide the necessary actionable insights to the company’s management team on how their business is doing and what needs to change
• Whether or not the current financing arrangements are best suited to meet the company’s needs
• How to reduce and streamline costs

The roadmap is delivered as a PowerPoint and presented in a 2-hour meeting to the management team.

How can this help the current finance team work better?

This process will identify any gaps in the current financial management cycle and make clear recommendations on which steps need to be taken to remedy the situation. As a result, your finance team will be able to work better on helping you achieve your strategic objectives.

Need more help?

We can work with your finance team and implement our recommendations.