Situation
Following the acquisition of a nine-figure private company, a $2B publicly traded industrial packaging manufacturer faced severe finance and operational breakdowns. The finance function was leaderless, fractured across three ERPs, and operating with just 3 out of 13 key positions filled.
Critical accounts receivable (AR) functions—including invoicing, collections, credit reconciliation, and reporting—had been abandoned due to attrition. Aging receivables surged, cash disbursements were chaotic, and compliance risks escalated, triggering audit failures and threatening the company’s receivables securitization program.
Finance operations were no longer merely inefficient—they posed a material threat to the business.
Action
Keenan Reid put measures in place to stabilize finance operations, recover cash, and implement compliance and controls. Key interventions included:
- Rebuild the Organization: Worked with leadership to fill 10 of 13 open roles, and directly partnered with staff to restore morale.
- Redesigned Order-to-Cash: Clarified ownership, embedded controls, and resolved breakdowns across three ERPs—turning manual chaos into a durable, auditable process.
- Accelerated Cash Recovery: Implemented customer-level accounts receivable recovery plans and implemented a durable, efficient collections.
- Enabled Automation & Visibility: Launched automated dunning, compliant invoice tools, and seller-facing dashboards—saving time, increasing transparency, and driving accountability.
- Mitigated Compliance Risk: Identified and remediated compliance issues, passing internal and external audits, restoring the company’s securitization program
Results
Within 9 months, Keenan Reid had helped the company mitigate over $40M in financial and operational risk.
- $6M in AR recovered, $5M in credits resolved, and $12M working capital improvement
- $25M+ in securitization risk neutralized through audit remediation and governance reengineering.
- Embedded accountability, automation, and visibility across finance—replacing manual processes with durable, tech-enabled infrastructure.
- Empowered sales teams with ownership of AR outcomes and gave finance leadership back control of the cash cycle.
This transformation not only stabilized a critical business unit but repositioned the finance team as a strategic partner to the enterprise—setting the stage for long-term value creation.
