Partnering with a Virtual CFO Service to Create Board Alignment around AOP

Challenge

This emerging growth company signed on with GrowthLab soon after closing their Series A round from several strategic investors. The Board had expanded with this round both in number and expectations. The company needed greater financial and strategic rigor and cadence. Since the Round had closed at the turn of the calendar year, the first place to start with strategic rigor was to build their Annual Operating Plan (AOP) and work with the Board to approve it.

The company was at an inflection point. They had spent five years in product development mode and were turning on the scaling engines. They had built a service to facilitate transactions in their $130 billion dollar industry and were looking to scale up quickly.

Our challenge was to get up to speed on their business, on the individuals (and personalities) of their Board, and develop an annual operating plan that leveraged their historical performance while forecasting the changes needed to scale up.

Solution

GrowthLab came in as the CFO partner alongside the CEO and founding team. Before diving into the development of the AOP, we held a series of white-boarding sessions with the founders to get to know their business and met with several members of their Board.

The top priority for the Board was to develop the company’s AOP. The management team had product, sales, and HR roadmaps that they wanted to execute on, but did not have the AOP on which to execute. GrowthLab built the AOP based on the information gleened in management meetings and the roadmaps articulated by management, and our expertise. After a few iterations with the management team the AOP was ready for Board review.

Results

After review and comments through two iterations, the Board unanimously approved the AOP which gave the management team the authority to go forth and execute. The management team had GrowthLab at their side helping them frame their communication, message, and story to the Board. This allowed the management team to focus more directly on their core functions of sales, capital raising, and industry integration.

Throughout the year GrowthLab helped the management team measure against their budget, identify risks & opportunities with the budget, and identify countermeasures to take to address those risks and opportunities. The company was able to make course corrections throughout the year to keep their operations in line with their revenue growth. The company remains strong and has continued to use GrowthLab to mange their entire Annual Strategic Planning process including their subsequent Annual Operating Plans, their Long-range Plan, and individual functional roadmaps.

This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal or accounting advice.