In today’s fast-paced business environment, CFOs are tasked with not only overseeing financial operations but also driving strategic growth, particularly when it comes to mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Ashley Honeyman, CFO of Consero, joined Jennifer Daniel, Managing Director of Assessments at Consero to discuss the critical decisions CFOs face in transforming their finance function to support growth and preparing for acquisitions.
This illuminating conversation covers the challenges CFOs face, the role of modern tech stacks, and the value of outsourcing finance operations to streamline finance functions during growth and accelerate acquisitions.
Challenges Scaling Finance Functions
Honeyman, a seasoned CFO with over 15 years of experience leading private equity- and venture capital-backed companies, knows that CFOs usually face multiple financial and operational hurdles when joining a new company.
Common challenges include:
- Lack of an FP&A function
- Outdated ERP systems
- Untracked financial metrics
- Incomplete acquisition integration
- Cash-based financials and a lack of finance employees
In her previous role at Pixel Media, Honeyman had to address several foundational issues in the finance department before taking on the challenge of managing acquisitions.
“When I joined in 2021, they were on QuickBooks Enterprise, had no finance employees, and were operating entirely on cash-based financials.” With the company also relying on HR for client billing, “it was almost a completely clean slate,” said Honeyman.
With the finalization of an acquisition pending, Honeyman needed to quickly operationalize the finance function to support the business’s rapid expansion. She faced a key decision on whether to take on the transformation internally or turn to a third-party finance and accounting expert.
Building In-house vs. Outsourcing the Finance Function
Tasked with modernizing the finance function, Honeyman shared her decision-making process when weighing the options between building in-house vs. outsourcing to an F&A partner like Consero.
Ashley had experience building finance functions in-house but realized that the time and resource commitments were prohibitive:
- Needing to hire 2-3 full-time finance employees
- Managing two ERP transitions, potentially taking more than a year
- Converting cash-based to accrual accounting for two companies
- Leveraging third-party consultants may still be required due to the transition complexity
With these challenges in mind, Honeyman decided to partner with Consero after they offered a faster, more comprehensive solution that could accelerate her timeline significantly.
“Consero said they could have the entire finance function complete, not just the GL, including the ERP transition, in two months. Knowing that I had to do the cash-to-accrual and modernize the finance stack, I couldn’t beat that timeline,” said Honeyman.
| In-House | Consero |
|---|---|
| Hiring 2-3 finance professionals. | No need for additional hiring. |
| More than 1 year for ERP transitions. | Completed ERP transition and full finance function setup within 2 months. |
| Third-party support needed for cash-to-accrual conversion. | Allowed CFO focus on strategic goals rather than operational finance. |
Additional Outsourcing Benefits
- Cost Efficiencies
Honeyman noted Consero’s unique model offered greater cost efficiencies than hiring in-house staff and procuring technology separately:
- Technology and staffing provided for a single fee
- Better technology partnership rates
- Offshore resource utilization
“If I had to go out and hire two to three people and get the technology, it actually would have been more expensive than Consero.”
- Accelerated Milestones
Honeyman also emphasized how working with Consero enabled her to accomplish much more in her first year as CFO with her previous company.
Within three months of starting, Ashley and Consero completed a cash-to-accrual transition and modernized the finance stack, including implementing Intacct, Bill.com, and Nexonia.
“Consero made me look really good…In my first year in the finance seat at my company, Consero enabled me to do purchase accounting for two acquisitions, modernized the financial tech stack for all three companies, and did two cash-to-accrual transitions.”
Compared to building in-house independently, Honeyman estimates “Consero sped up my timeline by at least half.”
The Financial Tech Stack: A Prerequisite for M&A Success
A modern and unified tech stack is essential for taking a company to sale, integrating acquisitions, and empowering CFOs to focus strategically. Ashley shared how Consero’s tech stack allowed her to manage acquisitions efficiently, despite the companies using disparate financial systems.
A unified tech stack:
- Seamlessly consolidates acquisitions.
- Eliminates financial reporting inefficiencies.
- Increases ability to focus on strategic planning rather than manual data reconciliation.
- Reduces operational friction, allowing CFOs to focus on high-level strategy.
- Simplifies sale preparation with ready-made and easily accessible financials.
Honeyman found that leveraging Consero’s platform reduced friction in the acquisition integration process. “It’s hard to integrate acquisitions. You have two different processes, two different operations. You don’t want the finance and accounting, the tallying of numbers, to be a barrier.”
“Consero makes sure that’s not a barrier because you can get an acquisition on your tech stack in two months. You can’t get that anywhere else.“
Consero’s proven tech stack freed Honeyman to focus on high-impact activities by ensuring timely and seamless integration of acquisitions.
“I don’t want to spend all my time worrying about making sure the numbers are right, if one company is in QuickBooks vs. Intacct, or if our systems are talking to each other.”
“With Consero’s unified tech stack, I didn’t have to do any evaluation of Intacct versus NetSuite or Bill.com versus MineralTree…we got every acquisition onto a single tech stack in a timely manner so we could do the more strategic things.”
Consero Advantage:
- Ability to integrate an acquisition onto the tech stack in two months.
- Faster operational integration and a clearer understanding of the combined business’s performance.
- Quickly scalable to support multiple acquisitions and integrations.
- No finance and accounting barriers.
Exit Readiness: Preparing for Due Diligence
A CFO with experience on both sides of the transaction process, Honeyman is well-versed on the difficulties of the due diligence process, and what it takes to oversee a successful exit.
She advises that CFOs preparing their company for a sale have all financial data structured, audit-ready, easily accessible, and on a consolidated system.
“The diligence is so detailed… they want to see every contract you’ve ever signed – customer, vendor, anything. You want all the numbers to be in order so that everything you’re putting in the data room… you know the data, you know the backup, you can go and get it if you need it.”
Best Practices:
- Ensure financial data is centralized and easily accessible.
- Have financial reporting structured for potential buyers.
- Track key metrics like revenue by customer and expenses by vendor.
- Maintain a clean, audit-ready financial history.
When Honeyman’s team received a letter of intent and large volumes of buyer requests, Consero’s team eased the burden on internal staff by quickly preparing necessary financial information.
“The nice thing is, if there are things on the list that are directly finance-related, I could send those to Consero… they prepare them, they put them in our drive, and I can pull them.”
Consero provided a unified platform also enabled Ashley to track financial data by various categories, ensuring she could meet the specific requests of buyers.
“If we hadn’t been on a unified system, the diligence process would have been significantly more difficult.”
2025 M&A Market Outlook
After several years of subdued activity, Honeyman forecasts an increase in M&A activity led by private equity, thanks to a more deal-friendly macroeconomic landscape.
“Interest rates are coming down, the economy looks fantastic…I would imagine there’s there’s a lot of M&A activity this year. I think there’ll be a lot of sales from PE companies.”
With the expectation that transaction volumes are on the rise, Honeyman shared how partnering with Consero made the M&A process smoother and less resource-intensive.
Outsourcing for M&A Support
53% of investor-backed CFOs already rely on outsourcing partners for M&A support. In Honeyman’s experience, some of the key benefits of leveraging a third party include:
- Cost-Effectiveness: Outsourcing is particularly beneficial for cost savings and accessing expertise for specific initiatives like cash-to-accrual conversions and purchase accounting.
- Flexible Staffing: Consero’s ability to provide additional resources during busy periods (such as acquisitions or audits) was a significant advantage.
Keys to Successful Partnerships
For CFOs relying on third-party support, Ashley emphasized the importance of treating the outsourced team as an extension of your own, working closely to ensure alignment with the company’s strategic goals.
“We met with Consero weekly and treated them as part of our team, not just a vendor. That was key to a successful partnership.”
Essential Qualities of Strategic CFOs
In Honeyman’s view, today’s CFOs must think beyond accounting and act as strategic partners, rather than financial controllers, in driving business growth.
“Strategy without finance is poetry, and finance without strategy is accounting. If you’re a financial leader, you need to think about what you need to do to push your company forward.”
The most successful CFOs, particular in private equity-backed companies, act as partners with the CEO to integrate and align strategy and finance to the executive team’s vision.
Key Qualities of PE-Backed CFOs
- Strategic partner with CEO
- Ability to align the finance function with the executive team’s broader goals
- Balance between operational and strategic focus
- Strong decision-making in M&A and exit strategies (buy- and sell-side transactions)
- Leverage technology for efficiency.
- Focus on value creation rather than just compliance.
How Consero Can Help Modern CFOs
Honeyman’s experience demonstrates the critical role modernized finance function plays in enabling CFOs to stay ahead of strategic goals, especially during acquisitions. Leveraging Consero’s team and cutting-edge tech solutions enabled her to rapidly accelerate system integration, financial reporting, and acquisition management milestones.
Consero has helped hundreds of investor-backed CFOs achieve similar success with flexible, tailored solutions at every stage of growth.
Our proven Finance as a Service (FaaS) model provides the systems, processes, and people to quickly operationalize your finance function to produce reliable, board-level reporting powered by our AI-enhanced platform.
If you already have existing technology, we have the expertise to work within your existing system and general ledger. Through Consero’s FlexFinance service, we can manage the back-office F&A function from end-to-end process, including closing the books. When you need skilled talent, we can supplement your F&A team via our FlexResources.
If you’re ready to modernize your finance function function, get in touch with us to learn more.
