Consero’s Finance as a Service (FaaS) offering delivers a complete, cloud-based finance department on demand, combining an integrated tech stack, seasoned accounting talent, and strategic CFO guidance for a single monthly fee.
The turnkey model supports very different challenges:
Public-to-Private Transitions: Coming off a public-to-private transition, Synacor needed to shrink headcount, shed legacy systems, and adopt PE-grade reporting—fast.
Consero slotted its platform and teams into the gaps, letting Synacor downsize from eight F&A staff to two while gaining richer controls and analytics.
Enterprise-grade Finance Dept. Overnight: With virtually no professional finance infrastructure, VC-backed RecoveryOne had to stand up audit-ready processes overnight yet stay capital-efficient.
Consero provided a ready-made ledger, expense module, close process, and on-call experts—giving the startup a finance function equal to far larger peers without hiring or buying software.
The result: both companies unlocked speed, cost savings, and scalability precisely suited to their unique starting points.
Synacor: From Public-Company Legacy to Private-Equity Agility
| Synacor Background | Consero Partnership Results |
|---|---|
| Investors: Centre Lane Partners | 51% cost savings in Year One of full FaaS implementation |
| Industry: Software Development | $812,000 payroll savings compared to building an in-house team |
| Revenue: $65M | $165,000 F&A tech stack savings compared to in-house |
| Employees: 109 |
When seven-time PE-backed CFO Ellen Purdy joined cloud-software provider Synacor in 2021, the firm was shifting from a public listing to private-equity ownership and had just divested a product line that generated one-third of its revenue.
To stay nimble, Synacor needed a leaner, scalable finance infrastructure and new revenue-recognition processes—without the cost and complexity of rebuilding an eight-person in-house team.
Purdy downsized the department to two staff plus herself and outsourced all finance and accounting to Consero’s FaaS platform, immediately gaining:
- An integrated tech stack
- Transactional support
- Controller-level oversight
- FP&A
- Strategic CFO bandwidth
How Consero absorbed unexpected turnover
When two key team-members (including the controller) resigned earlier than planned, Synacor suddenly faced a knowledge vacuum during the public-to-private carve-out.
Consero’s implementation squad—made up of a controller, senior accountants, AP/AR specialists and a dedicated client-success manager— filled in within days.
- They stood up interim close procedures so the first monthly close after the departures still landed on time.
- The Consero controller shadow-trained CFO Ellen Purdy and the remaining two staff, walking them through new revenue-recognition rules, SIMPL dashboards and PE reporting templates.
- A shared task-management board inside SIMPL tracked every open deliverable, giving Purdy real-time visibility into who at Consero was handling reconciliations, audit-prep work, or ad-hoc reports.
Because Consero already operates each process in its own standardized “pod,” they simply re-balanced capacity across pods to cover Synacor’s gaps—so no recruiting scramble or consultant premiums were required.
That ability to “drop in fully baked muscle” is why Purdy says Consero literally “trained us on the job and filled every gap.”
Get the playbook we use to help hundreds of businesses scale their back-office.
Schedule ConsultationYear 2: from triage to continuous improvement
With the finance train now reliably on the tracks, Synacor’s leadership pivoted to optimization projects that wring out manual touch-points and unlock richer analytics.
| Initiative | Legacy Pain Point | Consero-led Fix | Benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expense reporting | Stand-alone SaaS tool required finance to manually post JE’s; T&E errors slipped through approval chain. | Migrated to SIMPL’s built-in Expense Approvals & Payments module. | One-click posting to the GL, policy-based approvals, faster employee reimbursements. |
| Contract management / RevRec | Separate contract database + spreadsheets for multi-element arrangements. | Loaded contracts into SIMPL + NetSuite combo with automated ASC 606 schedules. | Eliminated spreadsheet version control, improved audit readiness. |
| Close calendar automation | Email chains to chase reconciliations. | SIMPL task manager auto-assigns and escalates tasks. | Month-end close shrank from 15 to 8 business days and is trending toward 5. |
| Dashboards & self-service KPIs | CFO spent hours building PowerPoint decks for the board. | Consero FP&A layer streams live metrics to board-ready dashboards. | CFO hours redeployed to scenario modeling and M&A due-diligence. |
Early estimates show these second-year projects will add another double-digit percentage of savings on top of the original 51 % cost reduction, but—equally important—they free Purdy and her lean in-house duo to focus on pricing strategy, vendor negotiations, and inorganic growth opportunities rather than back-office firefighting.
RecoveryOne: Building a Professional Finance Function Overnight
| RecoveryOne Background | Consero Partnership Results |
|---|---|
| Investors: 7Wire Ventures | 60% cost savings in Year One of full FaaS implementation |
| Industry: Health, Wellness & Fitness Technology | $99,000 staffing savings compared to building an in-house team |
| Revenue: $6M | $25,000 F&A tech-stack savings compared to in-house |
| Employees: 80 |
VC-backed digital-health company RecoveryOne hired CFO John Araki in 2019 to fix a “virtually non-existent” finance setup:
- QuickBooks cash accounting done by an office manager
- Month-end close handled by the owner’s personal accountant.
The mandate was to stand up an audit-ready, ASC 606-compliant finance operation and let strategic leaders focus on growth.
Needing a rapid solution, Araki chose FaaS. Without purchasing separate systems or hiring a full staff, RecoveryOne gained:
- A turnkey general ledger
- Expense management
- Reliable, investor-grade reporting
- On-demand expertise
Finance Department Live in Weeks, Not Quarters
When CFO John Araki arrived, RecoveryOne’s books were little more than a QuickBooks cash ledger. Consero installed its SIMPL™ platform and assigned a dedicated “pod” of SaaS-savvy accountants, a controller, and an FP&A analyst. Within six weeks:
- A GAAP/ASC 606-compliant chart of accounts replaced the single “expenses” bucket, giving each department its own P&L line and spending authority.
- Monthly close cadence dropped from “whenever the owner’s accountant could fit it in” to a fixed 8-day schedule with documented reconciliations and task tracking.
- A live management dashboard surfaced run-rate revenue, CAC/LTV, gross-margin trends, and cash-burn forecasts that investors could trust. Audit “prepared-by-client” folders were auto-generated, so RecoveryOne walked into diligence with a clean data room instead of a scramble.
The net effect: every budget owner received instant visibility into their cost center, and the board gained investor-grade reporting that met 7Wire Ventures’ requirements without forcing the startup to hire controllers, systems admins, or BI engineers.
Elastic Expertise On Demand
Growth companies don’t need a full-time FP&A bench every day—but they often need it tomorrow. Consero’s model gives Araki a virtual bullpen he can tap in hours:
| Scenario | Traditional In-house Response | Consero Response |
|---|---|---|
| New payer contract requires complex revenue waterfall schedule | Hire a consultant; two-week turnaround | Consero controller builds schedule same day, pushes to NetSuite via SIMPL |
| Investor asks for cash runway under three hiring scenarios by Friday | CFO burns a weekend in Excel | Consero FP&A analyst delivers scenario deck overnight |
| One-off audit request for 18 months of deferred-revenue roll-forward | Pull staff off operations, risk errors | Consero data team extracts, reconciles, and uploads to audit portal in hours |
Because the same pod already manages RecoveryOne’s books, no onboarding lag exists: context lives inside the team, so ad-hoc work is both fast and accurate. Araki calls it “extra lanes on the freeway” he can open whenever traffic spikes—paying only for the miles driven, not permanent headcount.
Scalability Without Growing Pains
As RecoveryOne signs new health-system contracts and adds therapeutic programs, Consero simply expands the pod’s capacity and toggles on additional SIMPL modules (e.g., multi-entity consolidation, purchase-order workflow) at subscription pricing. The finance stack scales in lock-step with revenue, letting leadership focus on product and partnerships, confident that the back office will never become a bottleneck—or a budget bloat.
Ready to Transform Your Finance Function?
Synacor and RecoveryOne show the nimble application of the Finance as a Service model. Without the burden of recruiting, training, and maintaining a full internal team, you can rapidly modernize finance operations, deliver double-digit cost savings, and gain the scalability and expertise required to exit public markets or racing through high-growth milestones.
Don’t let outdated processes and rising overhead hold you back. Take the next step today and schedule a call to start your finance transformation.
