Overcoming Post-M&A Paralysis
The reality no one talks about, and a 3 part framework to fix it
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At the bottom of this post you’ll get a quick round up on who’s taking the CFO seat at PE-backed companies. Scroll down for the latest from Parler, Ulla Johnson, and NatureSweet.
Overcoming Post-M&A Paralysis
The acquisition closed. Employee comms went out. The wire cleared.
(I always love to say… “It ain’t real, until the check clear.” Congrats. It cleared.)
Five months later, you’re staring at stalled progress and wondering why the deal thesis isn’t… well, deal thesising.
Your people are frozen. They’re waiting for direction.
In short, the pace you pitched to your sponsor? ZAPPED.
The Reality No One Talks About
This is post-acquisition paralysis, and it kills more deal value than most CFOs admit.
Let me know if you’ve ever been here before…
Your finance team doesn’t have access to the acquired company’s systems, so they’re asking for screenshots of monthly bank balances like it’s 2006.
You’re 17 days into month-end close and still chasing minor professional services revenue data from three different systems.
You’re paying for Zoom on fourteen different credit cards, but also at the company level through a negotiated MSA
You have three definitions of “customer”
Meanwhile, the one person who actually understands how their home-grown commissions system works just gave notice.
Why Integration Stalls
The root cause is part cultural, part operational:
Culturally, people don’t know what winning looks like in this new form. Your team doesn’t understand how their work connects to the new combined entity’s goals. Or worse, they’re still working toward the old company’s goals.
Operationally, systems are choking data flow. Multiple ERPs, fragmented CRMs, and disconnected reporting mean you can’t see what’s happening, let alone manage it. You are not watching results come in real time; you are piecing together the story after the fact like a hack crime scene detective.
Hanan Aharoni described his experience as CFO & COO at Operative after multiple acquisitions:
“Yeah, we’ve done quite a few acquisitions, and I think once you acquire a company, naturally you’re bringing in different processes, different systems, different people, perspective, and strategy, right?
You have to break the silo.
It starts from the top, meaning you need to create one leadership team. It doesn’t have to be day one, and it depends on the size of the acquisition. If it’s very, very small, you can just tuck them in and continue.
But you should pay attention, especially on large acquisitions, in terms of creating one leadership team, making sure that you have an organizational chart that makes sense, that empowers people, that enables the company to move fast, and resolve bottlenecks.”
Operative woke up and found they had offices in 10 countries with 10 different accounting systems, multiple CRMs, and bespoke billing solutions scattered everywhere. He described it as being the kind of situation where asking “what was Q2 revenue?” triggers a three-day archaeological dig through Excel exports sent via Outlook.
“So you can imagine we had very hard time understanding our data. It actually took us almost a month after the quarter end just to understand what happened in the quarter before, not to talk about real-time data, right? That was a big, big issue.”
The Three-Part Fix
Hanan spent two years rebuilding the operating foundation.
I’ll say that again… my man spent TWO YEARS rebuilding a solid foundation.
Here’s what moved the needle:
1. Consolidate Your Systems
One ERP to rule them all. One CRM. One HR system. One professional services platform. One equity system. All connected.
As Hanan put it:
“We basically implemented a set of systems starting from ERP, but then an HR system, an equity system, a professional services system, one CRM and so on, and connected them all. That created really significant benefit in terms of how we see the data and how fast can we get the data.”
Not “good enough for now” integration. Not “we’ll build a bridge in Workato and pray.” Actual consolidation.
Yes, this means sunsetting the legacy system that the sales team swears they can’t live without. Yes, this means migrating historical data. Yes, this is expensive (you often have to double pay for a couple of systems for a year) and painful (you also have to close the books in two systems for at least two quarters). Do it anyway.
2. Restructure Finance for Scale
Break apart your distributed finance teams and rebuild them as global service centers.
Hanan’s approach:
“I broke the current finance group apart and created new service centers. So instead of operating 10 different locations in terms of accounting teams, all responsible for revenue and collection and billing and tax and so on, we created one service center. Now, we have one global team doing billing, one global team doing collection, and the same for revenue recognition and FP&A.”
This isn’t about offshore arbitrage or FTE reduction.
It’s about having ONE person accountable for collections globally, not ten people with ten different definitions of “aging.”
It doesn’t matter if you are “saving money” on bad operations. It’s like cutting off your nose to spite your P&L.
The result was they went from a 30-day close to a day-one flash report with real-time KPIs across the board.
Imagine actually knowing your cash position without waiting for bank recs to clear!?
3. Standardize Core Processes
Build unified processes that work across all entities. Hanan emphasized:
“We created procurement processes, hiring processes that are aligned to the 30 entities we had, so everyone is on the same page and know what to do. So that’s a massive sort of shift and I think it’s essential when you have so many silos.”
If the New York office and the Austin office have different approval workflows for the same $5K purchase, you don’t have a process; you have a system of exceptions.
Why This Matters to Your Sponsor
Your sponsor didn’t write the check so you could spend 18 months building reporting infrastructure. No one has time for a book report.
But they also can’t exit at 18x EBITDA if you can’t prove the revenue is real and the margins are sustainable.
Most executives treat this as a back-office problem.
“The finance team will figure out how to close the books across 10 systems. It won’t be fun, but they’ll manage.”
Incorrecto.
That’s cholesterol building in your blood stream. You won’t notice until the chest pains start, and by then, you’ve burned a year of the hold period explaining to your investors why you’re not tracking to plan.
If you can’t understand how your org is pacing, it’s a company issue, a board issue, a management issue. It’s an everyone issue. You have to fix it, and while it starts with finance, it spreads slowly into the arteries of the org.
The worst part? Every CFO knows this. But most wait until the pain is unbearable, the board is asking hard questions, and the exit timeline is uncomfortably close. It’s the worst form of procrastination.
The best operators fix it in year one, when they still have patience from the sponsor and budget flexibility to do it right. Take it on the chin now rather than to the nose later.
Your call.
Leveraged Moves
Recent C-suite shifts across the private equity landscape… because people moves are performance levers too.
Gary Clarke is Parler Technologies’ new CFO, beginning his role in November 2025. His background includes serving as Chief Financial Officer in Residence for venture capital and sovereign wealth funds at Mach49. Parler Technologies is a private company actively seeking to establish a new valuation through a private placement offering of up to $100M.
Ulla Johnson has appointed Laura Pei as its new CFO, a first for the company, as part of the brand’s expansion and strategic growth. Pei previously served as the CFO of Burberry Americas and brings extensive experience from luxury brand like Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs.
Paul Bonvehi was named CFO of produce company NatureSweet. Bonvehi was previously the chief financial officer at Martori Farms, and held senior leadership positions at Driscoll’s and Reiter prior to that. Silver Ventures, a private company, sold NatureSweet to Blue Road Capital in September 2023, for an undisclosed amount.
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