A 3- to 4-week look across your finance, operations, and systems. You end with a prioritized plan.
If you already know exactly what is broken and just need it built, skip this and tell me what you need.
Software is the last decision to make. A vendor demo shows what the product can do. The first three steps establish what your business needs, so you know what to look for before you sit through one.
I sit with the owners and the people doing the work. We walk through how an order turns into cash, how a bill gets paid, how the books close, and whatever else is in scope. I want to see the spreadsheets people actually use and the workarounds nobody documented.
I follow the data: where each number comes from, how many times someone re-enters it, and which reports get rebuilt by hand every month.
I turn the findings into a list of what the business needs from its systems and reports, and what the people using them need.
I lay out how the work could run: which system holds each kind of data, what to automate, what to connect, and what to leave manual. Tools you already own come first. Then I put the changes in order, by impact and by what depends on what, and walk you and whoever else needs to be in the room through it.
The roadmap is yours. It is written to be useful whether I do the work, your team does it, or you hand it to someone else.
Most owners who call me can list four or five things they know are broken. The list is usually right. The order is usually wrong.
Reporting, then data
A faster wrong answer
Fix the data, then the reports
Automation, then cleanup
Automates the waste
Cut the steps, then automate
Software, then workflow
A platform your team works around
Map the workflow, then choose software
Scoped to the size of the business and the number of functions in scope. Quoted after the first conversation, before any commitment.
Three paths. Which one applies depends on what the roadmap finds.
I execute the roadmap. Systems, reporting, automation, process, software selection, and custom tools where what you can buy falls short.
defined scopeFractional finance or operations leadership, when you need the function led but not a full-time hire.
ongoingInterim leadership, when there is a gap to cover or a crisis to steer through.
part-time or full-timeMy goal on every engagement is to work myself out of a job. I build the systems and train your team to run them without me. If you want me to run them with you for a while first, that is what Run it and Bridge it are for. Plenty of clients stop at the roadmap and execute it themselves. That is a fine outcome and the deliverable is built for it.
Sometimes. The reason to bring in someone from outside can be that your team does not have the capacity, or that your team is inside the process. They can tell you what is painful. It is harder for them to tell you what is unnecessary, because the workaround has been there long enough to look like the job.
Sometimes. AI is useful when the right answer is a tool that does not exist yet, and the AR Command Center in my case studies is an example of that. But plenty of findings get fixed by removing steps, changing who owns what, or rebuilding a report properly.
Usually not. When new tooling is genuinely the answer, the first question is whether something on the market already fits, and often one does. I take no reseller commissions, so that recommendation is about fit and nothing else. When nothing on the market fits, building the missing piece is now far cheaper than it was even two years ago. I would rather leave you on the small right thing than sell you a platform.
Tell me what is going on and I will tell you whether a roadmap is the right starting point.