Business growth facilitation

Pearl Technologies Inc. manufactures a line of high-speed equipment and cutting blades for punching, perforating and slitting plastic film for the packaging industry.

Private equity owned with 43 employees, Pearl had just split-off from a parent company to become a fully independent entity. They had sought to hire a full-time CFO before discovering and engaging our Fractional CFO services.

As Pearl’s CFO, we were charged with building, from the ground up, a first-rate accounting system and managing the financial function over a four-year period. The success of our initial and ongoing work was instrumental to the company’s 25% revenue growth, to sustaining industry-leading profit levels and, then, to a successful merger and sale of the business.

Our work included staff hiring, staff development and supervision, ERP system utilization and establishment of all management financial reporting. We employed a cost accounting system for profitability analysis by product line and customer. To manage short-term cash flow, our weekly, 13-week cash flow model was implemented and became a vitally important tool. Customer credit policy and credit monitoring were among our responsibilities.

Of enormous value to management and the board was the use of our interactive, F3D financial forecasting model to rigorously plan monthly income and expense, financial position and cash flow. It became a central part of the annual operating plan. Analysis and valuable insight were contributed in the board’s quarterly review sessions.

Additionally, we established necessary outside professional relationships for accounting audit, business and health insurances. At year-end, we managed processes for obtaining fully audited financial statements. We oversaw compliance with a bank asset-based lending agreement.