Category: Portfolio Company Work
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How CFOs Should Rationalize Software Spend in a PE-Backed Company
Do not just “cut SaaS.” Build the inventory, classify every app, and take down 12-20 percent of spend without breaking anything. Template + classification matrix.
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How to Build a 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast for a PE-Backed Company
The operational 13-week cash flow. Data sources, ownership per line, the Monday ritual, and the 5 assumptions that break every forecast.
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How to Diagnose an EBITDA Miss: A CFO Variance Analysis Framework
Walk the EBITDA miss backwards through the variance waterfall. Revenue, gross margin, labor hours, wage rate, overtime, productivity. The 4 places you find the real story.
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Strategic Sourcing for Middle-Market Companies: Where CFOs Should Look First
How to find EBITDA hiding in fragmented middle-market spend. The 8-step framework, category-attractiveness table, and the three categories that pay for the whole exercise.
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A Practical Monthly Finance Cadence for PE-Backed Portfolio Companies
What actually happens WD1 through WD10 at a PE-backed portfolio company. Timeline, owner, output, and the mistakes that break the cadence in year one.
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Add-Backs and QoE: What Actually Survives the Buyer’s Scrub
Sell-side vs buy-side view of EBITDA add-backs. Accepted, negotiated, stripped. A real EBITDA bridge example, the three add-backs sponsors laugh at, and a QoE prep checklist.
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The PE-Backed CFO Board Reporting Package: What Sponsors Actually Read
Page-by-page structure for a 12-page PE board deck plus appendix. Good version vs bad version of each page. The three slides that get you a follow-up call and not in a good way.
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The First 90 Days as a Portfolio Company CFO: A Real Playbook
A real week-by-week playbook for the first 90 days as a portfolio-company CFO. What to read, what to close, what to fix, what to ship, and the five mistakes that get PE CFOs replaced in year one.
The Pragmatic CFO 