Client Profile:
Mid-sized engineering components manufacturer supplying to automotive OEMs (annual turnover: ₹170+ Cr)
Challenges:
- Cash flow always under pressure due to high dependency on working capital loans
- No product-level profitability insights; pricing was assumption-based
- Monthly MIS was delayed and Excel-based, leading to reactive decision-making
- Founders lacked visibility into gross margins and plant-wise financial control
CFO Pulse Approach:
🔰 CFO Shield (Stage 1)
- Conducted a 12-month 100% transaction audit to clean up books
- Ensured accurate and consistent classification of direct vs indirect costs
- Fixed accounting inconsistencies across plants
📊 CFO Dashboard (Stage 2)
- Built custom Power BI dashboards showing real-time revenue, margins, cost variances
- Developed plant-wise, product-wise, and customer-wise profitability tracking
- Created a daily cash flow dashboard linked to live bank balances & payables
🔍 CFO Lens (Stage 3)
- Monthly performance review meetings with department heads
- Identified electricity cost inefficiencies → cost-saving project reduced power costs by ~8%
- Improved gross margin monitoring → better control over pricing & discount leakages
🧠 CFO Brain (Stage 4)
- Conducted cash conversion cycle (CCC) analysis → reduced CCC by 21 days
- Strategic move: discontinued one low-margin product line, improving overall GP% by 3.2%
- Built 3-year growth forecast model to guide capex planning
Tangible Impact:
- From ₹10 Cr CC/OD limits → moved to cash surplus status with ₹17 Cr in FDs
- Revenue scaled from ~₹39 Cr to ₹170+ Cr within 3 years (with stronger financial discipline)
- Gross margin improved by 4.8% overall
- Created a culture of data-driven financial decisions across all departments
✅ Case Study 2: E-Commerce Brand (Apparel & Lifestyle)
Client Profile:
Digitally native fashion brand selling through own website and major marketplaces
(Annual revenue ~₹30 Cr; pan-India operations; D2C + Marketplace hybrid model)
Key Challenges:
- No visibility into region-wise product performance or logistics cost leakage
- Inventory was overstocked in low-performing warehouses, increasing fulfillment costs
- Margins differed significantly across SKUs, but data was not accessible in one place
- Financial reporting was fragmented across platforms (Shopify, Amazon, Flipkart)
CFO Pulse Approach:
🔰 CFO Shield (Stage 1)
- Mapped SKU-level COGS and ensured proper recording of fulfillment, marketing, and return costs
- Integrated data from multiple sales channels into a centralized finance system
- Created uniform cost heads for accurate margin tracking
📊 CFO Dashboard (Stage 2)
- Developed Power BI dashboards showing SKU-wise, region-wise, and channel-wise profitability
- Visualized return rates, delivery time, and logistics cost per order
- Built a real-time sales vs inventory heatmap to flag slow movers
🔍 CFO Lens (Stage 3)
- Identified that checkered shirts sold 3x better in South India, while printed designs performed better in West
- Helped reduce dead stock by 23% through inventory reallocation
- Exposed that one channel was eroding 8% margins due to high return & COD failure rates
🧠 CFO Brain (Stage 4)
- Advised on pricing corrections across 15 SKUs based on customer acquisition cost and fulfillment margins
- Built a demand-forecasting model to support smarter purchase planning
- Helped client shift to a decentralized fulfillment strategy, optimizing delivery speed & cost
Tangible Results:
- Reduced logistics costs by 23% through regional SKU optimization
- Increased gross margin by 6.7% by eliminating unprofitable product-channel combinations
- Built a live business cockpit for founders to track sales, returns, and profitability in real-time
- Enabled data-backed decisions on product expansion and discount strategy
