From strategy to leadership: Building the foundation for finance transformation
A growing, multi-entity retailer needed to modernize its finance function to better support its current operations and enable its next stage of growth. Highspring developed a transformation roadmap that identified approximately $250,000 in annual savings and $650,000 in future value opportunities while helping the organization establish the leadership needed to execute its future vision.
The Challenge
For a privately held multi-entity organization, growth meant new opportunities, but it also increased the complexity of its finance and accounting function. As the business expanded across multiple entities and lines of business, many core processes remained manual, reporting lacked consistency, and important institutional knowledge was concentrated among a small number of employees. The finance team was spending more time maintaining day-to-day operations than providing the strategic insights needed to support business decisions.
Leadership recognized that the business had outgrown its existing finance operating model. To better support its current state and future growth initiatives, the company needed greater visibility into financial performance, more scalable processes, and a clearer path for modernizing the function.
The Solution
Highspring conducted a comprehensive assessment of the client’s finance and accounting function, working closely with stakeholders to evaluate processes, reporting capabilities, technology, and organizational structure. It identified opportunities to strengthen operational efficiency and organizational effectiveness while providing leadership with a clearer understanding of the finance function’s current state.
The assessment culminated in a prioritized roadmap designed to strengthen finance operations through improvements in people, process, and technology. Rather than recommending isolated changes, it established a practical sequence of initiatives to improve reporting, streamline operations, strengthen governance, and better support long-term business objectives.
As the assessment progressed, it became increasingly clear that successfully executing the roadmap would require leadership aligned with the organization’s transformation goals.
Because Highspring had already developed a deep understanding of the organization’s business, operating model, and long-term objectives, the engagement naturally expanded to include an executive search effort focused on finding a strategic operational finance leader who could lead the future vision. The selected leader was introduced to the assessment findings and modernization roadmap from the outset, creating continuity between strategy development and execution.
The client also identified a need for specialized technology expertise to support the project. Highspring quickly engaged its talent solutions division, Vaco by Highspring, to identify and place a professional with the skills needed to support the effort.
Our Impact
The partnership delivered more than an assessment of the core processes within the finance function. It gave leadership a clearer understanding of opportunities to strengthen the finance function, a practical roadmap for modernization, and the leadership needed to help turn that vision into action.
During the assessment, Highspring identified approximately $250,000 in annual savings opportunities and an estimated $650,000 in additional future value opportunities through operational, organizational, and technology improvements. While these represented identified opportunities, they provided leadership with a prioritized view of where future investments could deliver the greatest impact.
Most importantly, it created continuity from assessment through execution, helping the organization move from identifying transformation opportunities to enabling the executive team to lead the transformation.
