PE-backed business services company reduces close time to 25% amid data and finance transformation 

The Challenge

A $200M private equity-backed Business Services company, recently carved out from its parent organization, faced significant operational and compliance risks. A difficult ERP implementation had left a lean, inexperienced finance team without internal leadership, standardized processes, or technical accounting capacity creating barriers to scale. The lack of documented controls, policies, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) exposed the organization to potential compliance and audit risk.

Simultaneously, the company’s growth-through-acquisition strategy presented another critical issue. Without a robust data governance program, the company struggled with data quality, inconsistent definitions, and a lack of standardized approval processes, hindering its ability to scale effectively and leverage data for strategic decision-making. The company required a partner to rapidly fill leadership gaps, establish foundational finance and data governance frameworks, and take ownership of key operational functions.

Our Solution

Highspring implemented a comprehensive, multi-faceted solution to address both the financial and data governance challenges. To stabilize financial operations, our team deployed interim leadership, including a CAO and Controller, to ensure continuity and provide immediate expertise. The Highspring team assumed full ownership of the Office of the CFO (OCFO), leading complex technical accounting workstreams, including debt restructuring, amortization schedules, and journal entries.

The team also designed and implemented over 12 SOPs across core finance processes, which streamlined operations. By taking full responsibility for Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable, Highspring introduced workflow automation to reduce manual tasks. The team also conducted a detailed sales commission analysis to optimize plans and align with industry standards, introducing new expense policies and controls to improve compliance and efficiency.

By building a scalable foundation for data management, the team developed a complete data governance program architecture. Highspring redesigned existing processes, cleansed data to improve quality and remove duplicates, and implemented consistent governance protocols.

A governance playbook was created to document an organizational charter, define roles and responsibilities, establish a formal governance body, and outline audit schedules and remediation procedures. Detailed process flows to map data lineage and transformation, enabling the client’s team to trace data issues back to their source.

Our Impact

In under six months, the Highspring team established a fully integrated OCFO model and a robust data governance framework, transforming fragmented operations into a controlled, scalable, and efficient organization. By replacing operational uncertainty with clarity and execution speed, the team unlocked measurable value for the client.

The impact of our partnership was clear and significant: 

• Accelerated month-end close from 11 to 8 days, providing leadership with faster visibility to results for quicker, more informed decision-making. 

• Reduced the time from expense to submission by 75% and eliminated late fees through new policies and controls. 

• Improved data quality to over 99% accuracy, leading to reliable reporting, forecasting, and modeling. 

• Established strong governance across finance and data, mitigating risk and ensuring the organization was audit-ready. 
• Created a scalable organization with a flexible governance playbook that has since supported the efficient integration of multiple new acquisitions into the existing data architecture.