Finance Transformation, Before the Dust Settles: How CFOs Build Finance for the Next Chapter

The sprint is over. The ERP is live, the Target Operating Model mapped, and the first wave of bolt-ons tucked in. But if you’re breathing a sigh of relief, you might be doing so too soon.

Transformation is Act I, not the finale. As John Kotter warned in Harvard Business Review, many change efforts fail because leaders “declare victory too soon.” The real challenge begins once the dust settles. This is the moment where value is either embedded or quietly leaks away.

Executive Summary

• Transformation is Act I, not the finale; value is created once the dust settles.

• Finance must lock cadence, cash discipline, and reporting confidence early.

• Leadership evolve-or-replace decisions determine long-term stability.

• Bolt-ons and organic growth expose weak spines; strong finance makes them routine.

• The CFO of the future needs leadership depth, cultural resilience, and tech/data enablement.

As one CFO in my network put it: “A CFO’s job is value creation in any environment. Full stop.”

Why post-transformation is dangerous

In the immediate aftermath of transformation, finance teams often find themselves in reactive mode. Integration firefighting, reporting delays, and cash visibility gaps are common. But this phase is also a critical inflection point. Without a deliberate pivot to stability and scalability, the gains of transformation risk being short-lived.

Transformation is constant. The best CFOs I know accept this and lean into it, rather than treating it as a one-off programme.

Three moves that create stability

To move from reactive to proactive, finance must make three foundational shifts:

• Lock the cadence. Finance needs rhythm. FP&A should drive the business narrative, not just respond to it. Cash must be under daily control, and reporting should meet investor-grade standards. This isn’t just about tools, it’s about mindset and discipline.

• Strengthen leadership depth. A strong CFO is essential, but not sufficient. Without a capable #2, a mature FP&A function, and clear investor relations readiness, the CFO becomes a bottleneck. Building out leadership depth frees the CFO to focus on strategy and growth.

• Build reporting that inspires confidence. Whether for internal stakeholders or external investors, reporting must be timely, accurate, and insightful. It is the foundation for trust and for decision-making.

Of course, structure is only half the battle. The real test is leadership - who evolves with the business, and who needs to be replaced.

The leadership equation pre- and post-transformation

Transformation always tests leadership, often in ways that are uncomfortable.

• Pre-transformation, the challenge is capability. You need leaders with the skills and resilience to carry out the heavy lift: ERP, SSC, TOM redesign, M&A integration. Not everyone in your existing team is cut out for that kind of change. If it’s business-critical and you’re relying on people without the experience, you’re taking a big risk.

• Post-transformation, the challenge shifts. It’s less about skill and more about appetite. The leaders who thrive in crisis and change often lose interest when the role becomes about BAU cadence, organic growth, and steady discipline.

I’ve had transformation leaders tell me directly that once the role shifted to BAU, their appetite was gone. That’s transformation fatigue at work. When they move on, the CFO is left scrambling unless succession was planned.

As one CFO in my network put it: “It’s easy to move bums on seats to do repetitive work. The hard part is building finance talent with the capabilities to thrive post-transformation.”

That’s why replacement planning needs to happen early. The best CFOs I’ve seen don’t bury their heads in the sand; they have honest conversations before the transformation starts. If someone isn’t likely to stay the course, you plan their exit in advance and execute a clean handover, rather than being caught short at the end of the programme. It’s better for the individual, better for the team, and it protects the business from losing momentum.

Expansion M&A: The next frontier

Private equity’s buy-and-build strategy remains a cornerstone of value creation, especially in fragmented industries (Bain, Global PE Report 2024). But unless finance is stabilised, every bolt-on feels like a crisis: inconsistent billing, different close cadences, and cash tied up in places no one can see.

As PwC highlights, most M&A deals fail to achieve expected value, not because of the deal model, but because integration wasn’t planned or absorbed. In practice, I see the same three failure points again and again: cash visibility, reporting lag, and CFO bandwidth.

The CFOs who get this right treat finance as the shock absorber. They embed discipline first, then run bolt-ons through a repeatable playbook:

• Day 1: cash position visible

• Day 30: chart of accounts aligned

• Day 60: reporting consolidated into group packs

• Day 90: forecasting unified

  
  

I saw this recently in an aviation services platform. Once ERP and cash cadence were stabilised, the finance team was able to integrate multiple bolt-ons over a 12-month period, each one consolidated into the group pack within a quarter. Integration stopped being a crisis and became routine.

As another CFO in my network told me: “Things have not worked well when an organisation doesn’t have a vision for a common platform and a common data repository with good structures.”

ERP timing, before the M&A sprint or after, is a debate of its own. I’ll tackle that in a future piece.

The lesson is simple: M&A isn’t the end of transformation; it’s the test of whether finance has embedded stability. If the spine is weak, growth will break it.

Organic growth needs the same discipline

It’s tempting to think that organic growth is simpler. You don’t have the noise of integration or system migrations, so it should be smoother. But in reality, sustainable growth demands just as much structure.

This is where I see teams trip up most often:

• Margins don’t expand with sales. Revenue goes up, but working capital is tied up in receivables and stock, so cash doesn’t follow.

• Forecasts lose credibility. Growth is celebrated in the boardroom, but FP&A can’t keep pace, so variance to plan widens.

• Controls loosen. Rapid headcount growth without clear ownership leads to inconsistent approval processes, duplicate spend, and “leakage” in overhead.

The CFOs who thrive in this phase impose the same level of discipline as in M&A:

• Working capital governance that ensures every pound of growth converts to cash.

• Forecasting cadence that keeps error bands under control even as volume grows.

• Leadership layering so the CFO isn’t dragged into BAU approvals and can focus on scaling strategy.

  
  

I dealt with this recently: a business doubled revenue in a short period, but the FP&A function was still stuck in the “pre-growth” era. Forecasting lost credibility and visibility slipped just as investors were pressing for clarity. Bringing in a globally minded FP&A leader reset the agenda, building modern processes, tightening forecasting, and giving the CFO the confidence to lead the next chapter. That kind of upgrade is what separates businesses that stall post-transformation from those that scale sustainably.

People and culture: Managing energy and fatigue

Transformation fatigue is real. Teams can burn out, and leaders who thrived in chaos may disengage once the role shifts to BAU. The best CFOs manage energy, celebrate quick wins, and plan clean handovers rather than waiting until morale dips.

Tech and data enablement

ERP is the backbone, but automation and AI are reshaping finance ops. From forecasting to working capital, the CFOs who build data fluency into their teams are already setting the pace for the next chapter.

As one CFO told me: “Of course you need a robust ERP, but underpinning everything is data, data, data. AI is coming at a rate of knots, but without clean and structured data, it delivers little.”

I’m also seeing CFOs push their teams to become more technical, FP&A analysts learning Python isn’t uncommon now.

The dust may have settled, but the real work is embedding discipline, depth, and leadership for the long term. That’s what turns a successful transformation into a platform for growth.

Investors will always ask the same two questions: what’s driving value, and what’s driving cash? The CFO who can answer both with confidence is the one who leads the next chapter.

If you’re mid-transformation or approaching the end, don’t wait for the dust to settle. Have the leadership conversations now, embed cadence early, and build your finance spine before growth tests it.