scaling

The CFO Files | Case #001: The £20M Growth Engine

The “Impossible” Scale: From Cash-Strapped to the Times Fast Track 100.

The Mystery: A business stuck at the £4M ceiling. The order book was bulging with “Big Fish” clients, but the bank balance was perpetually on life support. The finance department was a pressure cooker of stress, and “automated” systems were failing to bring in the cash.

The Investigation: When WrightCFO stepped in, the remit was simple: “Fix the chaos.” But you cannot fix a business with spreadsheets alone. It requires a blend of human leadership and aggressive financial engineering.

The Talent Gap: We found a team drowning in tasks they weren’t qualified for. By shifting the heavy lifting away from an overstretched Finance Manager and onto a strategic CFO framework, the “fog” lifted immediately.
The Human Intersection: In a world obsessed with automation, we went back to basics. We stopped purely relying on “auto-emailing” debtors and started picking up the phone. Relationships collect cash; software just sends reminders.
The Data Void: We moved from “guessing” to “knowing” by implementing robust, real-time management accounts.

The Breakthrough (The Infinite Cash Loop): To scale from £4M to £20M, we had to re-engineer the company’s financial DNA. We built a Sequential Financing Loop that turned the Purchase Order (PO) into a weapon:

Trade Finance: The bank paid the factory based on the PO. Production started without touching the company’s core cash reserves.
The Port Pivot: The moment goods were shipped and arrived at the port, we raised the invoice.
The Handover: Invoice financing then cleared the Trade Finance loan.
The Result: This created a “self-funding” growth cycle. It was the only way the business could afford the massive production runs their new, global clients demanded.

The Verdict: By engineering the cash flow and mentoring the leadership, we didn’t just survive the growth—we accelerated it. This business didn’t just hit their targets; they landed a spot on the Times Fast Track 100.

If you’re scaling past £4M, you don’t just need a bigger sales team. You need the “Financial Plumbing” to handle the pressure.