7 Mindsets Cuts Finance Costs by 67% with Consero

As CEO of a fast-growing company, 7 Mindsets founder Scott Shickler stays focused on maximizing impact, not maximizing payroll. Partnering with Consero lets his team do exactly that.

7 Mindsets is an education company serving over 5 million students across all 50 states, pre-K through 12. Before working with Consero, its finance operation ran on a four-person team, from a CFO to a senior accountant. Consero stepped in and took over the entire function.

Cutting Finance Costs

With Consero running the finance function, 7 Mindsets eliminated the overhead of staffing an in-house team while keeping full financial oversight.

“I used to have a finance department that ran us $750,000 a year. I was able to cut that into a third.” — Scott Shickler, Founder & CEO, 7 Mindsets

Clean Data Before New Tools

Before adding new technology, Consero focused on the fundamentals: cleaning up 7 Mindsets’ underlying financial data and standardizing its processes. Layering automation onto messy books only locks the mess in.

“When you try and layer new tools onto messy financials, you’re just automating a mess. So we really wanted to make sure our data was squeaky clean and our processes were in place.” — Sara Jones, VP of Finance, 7 Mindsets

Choosing the Right Platform

Consero doesn’t push a one-size-fits-all system. Each client’s situation gets evaluated on its own, landing on the platform that fits the business rather than the one that’s easiest to implement.

“We haven’t found a single platform that’s right for every situation. We want to make sure that we’re giving our clients the right advice that makes sense for them, that adds value to their organization.” — Tim Neville, Managing Director, Consero AI Fusion Lab

Choosing Rillet and Speeding Up the Close

For 7 Mindsets, that evaluation led to Rillet. Consero helped the team work through the decision strategically, then implement it. A new Stripe integration and a faster order-to-cash process followed, and reporting and financial information became easier to access. The monthly close dropped from 10 days to 7, and the team is now pushing from 7 days to 5. Sara’s own role shifted along with it, from administrative work toward automation, operations, and financial reporting and analysis.

“The biggest efficiency gains that we’ve unlocked are our Stripe integration, and our order-to-cash process has been really sped up. Our accessibility to reporting and financial information has been greatly improved. The speed to close right now has been reduced from 10 days to 7 days, and now we’re going from 7 days to 5 days. My role has changed a lot in that I’ve been able to focus more on automation and operations, and more on financial reporting and analysis rather than administrative work.” — Sara Jones, VP of Finance, 7 Mindsets

What Separates Consero from a Typical Vendor?

Automation freed the 7 Mindsets team to focus on higher-value work, and Scott sees that as the real payoff of the partnership. For Tim Neville, staying involved after go-live is what separates Consero from a typical vendor relationship. Many finance vendors treat implementation as the finish line. Consero’s team has run hundreds of implementations and typically completes them in one to three months, compared with the 6 to 12 months common elsewhere.

“A lot of vendors are doing this as just purely a software implementation. They’re implementing the software, and they say goodbye, I’ll see you later. Consero doesn’t do that. Consero is with you for the long run. We’re not only implementing you on the system, we’re supporting you on the system. Many finance leaders in the space have maybe done one or two implementations. We’ve done hundreds. Most implementations at a lot of these companies can take 6 to 12 months. We normally do this in 1 to 3 months, depending on the size of the company.” — Tim Neville, Managing Director, Consero AI Fusion Lab

Working With Consero

Ask Sara Jones whether the partnership is worth it, and the answer comes back without hesitation.

“If another VP of finance asked me if working with Consero was worth it, I would tell them absolutely. They would bring processes together. They’ll bring stability, efficiencies to the accounting and finance functions. They’ll feel like they have a partner in their finance world.” — Sara Jones, VP of Finance, 7 Mindsets

“It’s great to have a partner that brings technology and the human connection together at the same time to make us all better,” Scott says. For 7 Mindsets, that combination turned a costly, understaffed finance function into a scalable one: more than two-thirds in savings and a close that keeps getting faster.

Weighing an in-house build against a partner model? See how the two approaches compare in Finance as a Service vs. In-House: How to Build Your Finance Department, or request a consultation to talk through your own finance function.