Case Study: Finance

M&A Activity – Finance Transformation

Brief:

Clayton, Dubilier & Rice invested into Wolseley UK Ltd and were tasked with creating a Group Accounting function from scratch. Working with Alevio, we were retained to source an Interim CFO to create the transformation model, whilst looking for further interim support to navigate the business through an acquisition of a group of international companies as invested in by the PE house. The business was UK based so had no international group accounting function – utilising our world-class alumni, we deployed multiple interims to support an initial group accounting function for 6 months and then moved to a commercial accounting interim project to further support the business for the remainder of the acquisition period.

Approach:

A blended approach was necessary and the most cost-effective solution for the company. Using management consultancy to assess the transformation in the early stages enabled a highly effective and robust plan that was then executed by our interim specialists.

Challenges:

As with any transformation, challenges arose throughout the lifecycle of the project, including the necessity to implement a new ERP system to support the groups’ acquisitions. By size and transactions alone, the previous ERP in the business was clearly too small to support the size of transactions, so an interim technical specialist was deployed to select a new system. A team of specialist technicians was then provided to fully implement the system aligned with the companies’ new group structure.

Landscape:

Met with the Group CEO and Group CFO of the company to assess current landscape and future requirements (as is and to be status determination)
Project-led evaluation led to a blend of consultants and interim practitioners
Delivery was highly cost effective, managed by our specialists in-house, acting as a project manager between interim staff and C-suite of the business

Structure – Deployed Interims

THE RESULTS

The Outcome (post 6-month project)

Within 4 weeks:

A group accounting function was set up in the UK headquarters and four of our interim practitioners started sharing insight and knowledge through various training methods with internal employees to take them on the journey of the implementation and get them up to speed quick. We released two senior consultants from the project as they had successfully delivered on their work within the project and were no longer required – it was more cost effective to retain the interim practitioners to share the training proving the flexible hiring method.

Within 12 weeks:

We released two further interim practitioners from the assignment for even further cost efficiency as the internal employees were starting to perform group accounting tasks and functions as BAU from the previous training delivered, so we retained two of our contractors to continue delivering on support where required. When training or support wasn’t required, our practitioners delivered on commercial accounting alongside the FP&A function of the business to further strengthen the commercial accounting capability in the group accounting function. After the 12-week period, no further training or support was necessary, so the project naturally ended with all practitioners off site and everything implemented successfully, with all internal staff having been upskilled to a very high calibre group accounting function.

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