The Situation
The company was operating on a financial plan that had started to crack. Errors in the planning had surfaced late. The advisory board, already concerned about a tight liquidity position, had lost confidence in the numbers. To make matters worse, the person responsible for the financial model was unavailable at a critical moment.
A budget needed to be approved. Hiring decisions depended on it. Cash planning depended on it. And the clock was ticking.
Beyond the immediate crisis, a deeper problem had been building for some time. The company had no integrated financial model. Planning was manual, error-prone, and disconnected from the systems that held the actual data. Nobody could say with confidence which large invoices were expected in any given month, whether key billings were on track, or when cash would actually arrive. Problems only became visible after they had already become real. By then, it was too late to act.
Sales cycles had historically been estimated too optimistically. The conversion impact of new hires in sales and marketing had been overstated. The budget itself was too thin to support the targets it was supposed to deliver. The company had been planning on assumptions, not on facts.
Approach
Uhlig Capital was brought in under significant time pressure. The work moved in two phases: first, stabilize the immediate situation; then, build something that would last.
Phase 1: Immediate Stabilization
Cash came first. Before touching the P&L logic or balance sheet structure, the team focused entirely on the liquidity plan. The most critical inputs were pressure-tested: hiring needs, cash requirements, upcoming billings, and expected inflows. Several levers were identified to improve short-term cash flow, and immediate measures were put in place.
Multiple scenarios were modeled. The team worked through best case, base case, and downside scenarios with the management and the advisory board. The result was a budget that everyone could stand behind. Not because it was optimistic, but because it was grounded in reality.
Restoring trust between the top management and the advisory board was as important as getting the numbers right. The budget approval became the moment where alignment was re-established. Everyone in the room could look at the same numbers and believe them.
Phase 2: Integrated Financial Model
With the immediate pressure resolved, the work shifted to building what the company had been missing: a strategic, integrated financial model rooted in historical data rather than assumptions.
The model brought several things to light that had previously been invisible. Sensitivity to certain input factors was higher than expected. Historical hiring investments in sales and marketing had underperformed relative to assumptions. Sales cycles were consistently longer than planned. All of this was now visible, quantified, and built into the model.
The integrated model became a shared decision-making tool for the management team and the advisory board. It enabled capacity planning for the years ahead, made the real drivers of the business transparent, and strengthened the company's equity story.
Phase 3: Operational Steering Tool
The financial model was not built to sit in a vacuum. It was designed as an operational tool for day-to-day management. The company moved from a world where it tracked actuals against budget once a quarter to a system that cleanly separated actuals, budgets, and forecasts in real time.
The biggest shift was in cash management. Previously, the company reacted to problems after they had already materialized. Now, the system surfaced the three most important upcoming invoices, flagged blockers early, and triggered proactive conversations with customers before a delayed payment could become a cash problem.
Data imports from existing systems were automated, removing the manual, error-prone processes that had contributed to the original issues. The finance team could now spend its time on analysis and decisions rather than on assembling spreadsheets.
Outcome
Trust between the top management and the advisory board was fully restored. The approved budget became a document that everyone genuinely believed in, built on historical facts rather than hopeful projections.
The integrated financial model gave the company a strategic tool it had never had before. It made the real drivers of the business visible, enabled informed decisions about hiring, investment, and growth, and provided a solid foundation for the equity story.
The operational steering tool transformed how the company managed its finances day to day. From reactive to proactive. From opaque to transparent. From manual and fragile to automated and reliable.
With the financial foundation in order, the management team could do what mattered most: focus on the business. And sell.
Key Takeaways
- Cash first, everything else second. In a liquidity-sensitive situation, the P&L and balance sheet can wait. Start with what keeps the company alive: a pressure-tested cash plan that everyone trusts.
- Trust is rebuilt through facts, not promises. When confidence in the numbers has been lost, the only way back is radical transparency. Ground every assumption in historical data. Model scenarios honestly. Let the numbers speak.
- A financial model is not a one-time exercise. The real value comes when it becomes an operational tool that separates actuals, budgets, and forecasts, surfaces problems early, and drives proactive decision-making.
- Optimism is not a planning method. Overstating sales cycle speed, overestimating the impact of new hires, and underbudgeting against ambitious targets are patterns that compound quietly until they become a crisis. Historical benchmarks are the antidote.
