We’re Ellen and Simone. After 36 years in finance, we’re ready to share what textbooks won’t tell you.

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READ OF THE WEEK

Over this two-part mini series, we look at M&A from the CFO’s seat - before and after the deal.

In episode 1, we focused on decision quality: when M&A makes sense, when it doesn’t, and how CFOs should think before models, advisors, and momentum take over.

This episode is about accountability after signing: how CFOs make sure the deal thesis survives contact with reality - and how to tell whether a transaction actually delivered what was bought.

And that’s where things usually get uncomfortable.

1) The Deal Thesis Is Now a Delivery Contract

At signing, something important changes.

The deal thesis stops being an argument - and becomes a commitment.

The assumptions that justified the transaction don’t disappear once the board approves the deal. Growth, margins, synergies, integration timing - all of these become benchmarks against which success should be judged.

This is where CFOs play a critical role.

Let’s be clear: CFOs should not run post-merger integration.
And they shouldn’t disappear either.

Integration is typically led by a dedicated owner - in larger organizations often a project team or IMO, in smaller setups a senior leader alongside their day job.

The role is consistent: set priorities, define timelines, and coordinate execution across functions. Each department owns its part - finance, for example, maps accounting into the group system and aligns reporting - while the integration lead keeps everything moving.

The CFO’s role is different.

Not to manage execution.
Not to sell the story.
But to anchor delivery to the original deal thesis.

CFOs remember why the deal was approved - and what was supposed to happen next.

A practical first step:
Before Day 1, translate the thesis into a short list of measurable commitments (no more than five to seven) and agree upfront how and when each will be reviewed.

A useful test: If you can’t review the deal six months later without reopening the original model, clarity has already been lost. 

2. Day One: Control Before Synergies

There’s a temptation to talk about synergies immediately after closing.

That’s usually the wrong priority.

Day 1 is about control and continuity:

• Do we control the cash?

• Do payroll and billing run without disruption?

• Can we see clean, reliable numbers?

• Is decision authority clear?

Until these basics are in place, integration plans and synergy targets are theoretical.

Value leakage rarely starts with big strategic mistakes.
It starts with small operational blind spots.

If control isn’t established early, everything that follows becomes harder, slower and noisier.

3. Did the Deal Deliver What We Bought?

This is the most uncomfortable question in M&A - and the most important one.

Measuring success isn’t about whether the deal looks reasonable in aggregate. It’s about whether this transaction delivered what you underwrote.

That requires discipline:

• Compare performance to the original business case

• Assess the deal individually - not as part of a blended portfolio

• Separate acquired results from group-level noise

✅ What Success Looks Like

• Thesis holds: Growth and synergies show up.

• Performance tracks: Results match the case.

• Synergies land: Benefits hit the P&L on time.

• Core stays strong: The base business doesn’t slip.

⚠️What Failure Looks Like

• The story changes: Underperformance gets reframed.

• “Almost there” synergies: Quarter after quarter.

• Playbooks fail: GTM or ops don’t transfer.

• Integration drifts: Systems and ownership stay unclear.

Where deals break down is often simple: assumptions that looked transferable on paper weren’t.

More than once, we’ve seen teams assume the existing marketing or sales playbook would work just as well in the acquired company - and it didn’t. Different customers. Different buying behavior. Different channels.

The numbers missed not because the product was wrong, but because the go-to-market assumptions didn’t carry over.

And one question matters more than most:

What happened to the core business during integration?

If management attention was absorbed and the base business slowed, that cost belongs to the deal - even if it never appears in the model.

A simple forcing question helps here:

Knowing what we know now, would we deploy the capital the same way again?

If that answer is hard to give, the deal deserves a closer look.

4. Integration Choices Decide Whether Value Shows Up

Integration is often described as an operational exercise.
In reality, it’s a series of strategic choices - and those choices compound quickly.

One helpful way to think about post-merger integration is not as a single decision, but as a set of integration models - each with different implications for control, risk, and value creation.

One of the most expensive answers in M&A remains:

“We’ll integrate later.”

In practice, that often means:

• systems coexist longer than planned

• accountability becomes fuzzy

• synergies are “almost there,” quarter after quarter

For CFOs, this usually shows up in a handful of recurring integration decisions:

💻 Systems
Do you migrate the acquired company onto your ERP within 6–12 months or let parallel systems run “for now”?
Parallel systems feel harmless early on. In practice, they delay reporting clarity, blur accountability, and make synergy tracking harder with every month that passes.

🏗️ Operating model
Do you fully integrate functions like finance, HR, and procurement or leave them decentralized?
Decentralization can preserve speed, but it also makes cost and capital synergies harder to capture unless roles and decision rights are explicitly defined.

🎯 Incentives
Are management bonuses still tied to standalone performance or to the combined business case?
If incentives don’t reflect the deal thesis, execution will drift, no matter how good the integration plan looks on paper.

Pro Tip:
Decentralization only works if escalation paths and financial ownership are crystal clear. If not, integrate.

🧭 Governance
Who decides when trade-offs arise between the core business and the acquisition?
If that’s unclear, decisions slow down and value leakage creeps in through delay rather than bad intent.

Those trade-offs add up faster than most teams expect.

If you wouldn’t be comfortable holding someone accountable for it six months after close, it shouldn’t be underwriting your price today.

🔎 CFO Watchlist

From Trial Balance to CFO Dashboard in 30 Minutes - Watch the Recording

Thanks to everyone who joined us live - more than 200 finance professionals tuned in.

Together with Finton Advisors, we demonstrated how AI can move finance from manual modeling to real-time insight in minutes.

If you missed it - or want to rewatch the demo - the full recording is now available.

In 30 minutes, we cover:
→ Claude vs. Gemini add-ins in Excel
→ Live build: Trial Balance → 3-Statement Model → CFO Dashboard
→ AI-generated P&L, variance analysis & commentary

For CFOs and finance leaders exploring how AI fits into the finance stack, this is a practical, no-hype example.

👉 Watch the recording here.

SaaS CFO 2026 Tech Stack Report

The SaaS CFO just released his 2026 Tech Stack Report. Three takeaways stand out:

🧩 Best-of-breed still dominates.
For the fifth year in a row, SaaS companies prefer specialized tools over full ERP suites - especially in early and mid-stage growth.

📊 FP&A remains spreadsheet-first.
~73% still forecast in Excel or Google Sheets, despite heavy VC funding in planning software.

🧾 Revenue recognition scales with complexity.
~73% still forecast in Excel or Google Sheets. The remaining share is fragmented - with Drivetrain at ~5% and others like Mosaic, Abacum and Pigment each in low single digits.

One nuance: the sample includes many smaller SaaS companies, which naturally tilts results toward lighter systems and spreadsheets. Larger organizations may look different.

👉 Download the full report here.

🌐 Finance Collective DACH

Your go-to CFO Network (by Simone)

CLOSING REMARKS

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CFO Playbook reflects our personal opinions, not professional advice.