Managing Liquidity, Improving Working Capital, & Improving Process
The Situation
A $120M powerline infrastructure construction company with an incoming CEO and CFO was experiencing significantly lower job margins with no visibility into why margins were suffering. Accordion was brought in to help the Board understand why, identify value creation/performance improvement opportunities, and improve financial reporting/forecasting. Shortly thereafter, our team was asked to quickly build a forecast, business plan, and a global 13-week cash forecast to present to lenders. We advised the Company on its refinancing, and were asked to take an active role on the Finance team to manage working capital and improve related processes.
Services
Active Liquidity Management
13-Week Cash Flow Forecasting
Budgeting & Forecasting Process Improvement
The Execution
- Built a monthly 3-statement forecast model and business plan under tight time constraints to present to lenders.
- Prepared an integrated 13-week cash forecast based on forecasted sales, cash receipts, disbursements & changes in working capital.
- Pin-pointed short- and medium-term liquidity challenges, leading to a refinancing.
- Identified and helped support key actions to improve availability and extend the liquidity runway.
- Worked with the Company’s stakeholders to align cash flow forecast templates and methodologies across multiple subsidiaries
- Supported conversations between the Sponsor, Company and Lenders to achieve refinancing solution.
- Developed a robust accounts receivable visibility module, improving existing processes and providing insight to facilitate sales engagement – thereby leading to accelerated receipts and improving working capital.
- Created a detailed accounts payable module to strategically manage payables and generate weekly “check run” for Controller to approve and payables team to execute
- Re-designed the end-to-end payroll process and created PowerQuery-based tool to support and accelerate weekly payroll execution in close coordination with team and C-level executives
- Managed and executed cash flow forecasting processes and variance reporting on an ongoing basis, and thereafter trained and transitioned to the Company’s full-time FP&A hire.
The Results
Accordion brought liquidity management leadership, tools, and execution to the Company’s dispersed operations on a short timeline. Our team helped the Company achieve a refinancing through the creation of a business plan and cash flow forecast. We developed robust models and standardized processes for cash forecasting, collection of accounts receivable, management of accounts payable, and payroll execution. Subsequently, we successfully transitioned the 13-week cash flow forecasting processes and related tools to the Controller, FP&A lead, and respective members of the finance team.