When private equity firm Tritium Partners invested in PELITAS (now FinThrive), a rapidly growing healthcare SaaS company serving 200+ hospitals and ambulatory locations, they knew PELITAS needed to upgrade its finance and accounting function to support rapid scaling and attract a strategic CFO.
At Tritium Partners’ direction, PELITAS partnered with Consero to build a robust financial foundation, ensuring their new finance leader could focus on strategic initiatives from day one.
Why Tritium Partners Brought in Consero First: Preparing the Back Office for a Strategic CFO
Tritium saw strong product-market fit at PELITAS but recognized the existing finance function could not support its aggressive growth trajectory.
- The company’s accounting capabilities required greater sophistication to match its market potential and meet investor expectations.
- Tritium wanted to hire a strategic CFO, but worried a new hire would be bogged down building an accounting team and processes from scratch.
- Building an in-house finance department would divert critical time and resources away from the firm’s 100-day plan.
“We hired Consero because they provided us leverage to immediately upgrade our finance function without hiring a large back-office team,” said Chris Steiner, Principal of Tritium Partners.
- Consero enabled Tritium to advance its 100-day plan with confidence that the “basic finance function would be handled properly.”
- The PE team avoided delays and risk that come from cleaning up books after a CFO hire.
Implementing an Instant, Scalable Finance Backbone
Consero’s comprehensive outsourced Finance as a Service (FaaS) solution immediately upgraded PELITAS’s financial operations, implementing scalable systems, teams, and processes to meet the company’s growth and reporting demands.
- Consero implemented a full team with scalable systems and processes to produce GAAP-compliant, audit-friendly financials.
- The team managed PELITAS’s conversion to accrual-accounting, its first-ever audit, and the establishment of a credit facility.
- Put reliable month-end close and reporting in place before a permanent CFO arrived.
Accelerating the CFO’s Strategic Impact
With Consero running the core finance engine, the newly hired CFO could prioritize value-creation over back-office buildout.
Donald McClure joined as CFO about a year after Tritium’s investment, bringing deep corporate development and FP&A experience.
- McClure stepped into a fully functioning system, allowing him to immediately focus on learning the business and executing key deliverables.
- He completely avoided the time-consuming process of hiring, training, and managing a new finance staff.
“I was glad to see Consero would be handling the basics when I arrived… It would have taken me significant time, and a much bigger budget to get a finance team set up in-house,” said McClure.
“Consero was able to close the books and provide the reporting on time that first month I was there,” avoiding a drawn-out 45-day first close.
Proven Resilience and Audit Readiness
Consero’s model delivered consistent, reliable support that proved resilient through significant market disruption and enabled long-term strategic focus, keeping stakeholders informed and confident throughout.
- During the COVID-19 crisis, Consero’s proactive transition to remote work ensured no loss of visibility into performance for investors or the management team.
- Critical reporting never slipped or slowed down, providing crucial stability during a challenging time.
- Consero continues to take the lead on financial processes like the annual audit, freeing the CFO to concentrate on strategic growth priorities.
“By bringing Consero on first and readying the back office for private equity and bank reporting demands, we were able to focus on sourcing the kind of strategic CFO that fit the needs of PELITAS in the long run without having to build out a large finance team,” said Steven Huddleston, CEO of PELITAS.
Investor Confidence from Day One
The partnership delivered consistency, visibility, and the reporting discipline investors require.
- Readying the back office for private equity and bank reporting demands freed PELITAS to recruit the right strategic CFO..
- PE stakeholders gained timely, accurate financials for decision-making.
Is your portfolio company being held back by its finance function? Do you need to empower your finance leaders to focus on strategy instead of administration?
Partnering with Consero equips your portco with a finance function that scales from day one. We install investor-grade systems, accelerate leadership impact, and keep your focus on value creation. Schedule a meeting to see how Consero can drive similar results for you.
