Finance strategy for Aferian plc 

B2B video streaming services company, Aferian plc worked with VantagePoint post acquisition to unify their people, processes, and systems.

Background

Aferian plc is a B2B video streaming service. They approached us knowing they wanted to go on the M&A warpath and needed a finance function to support their growth plan. They had an ambitious business strategy which involved growing the digital side of their business and tripling revenue through organic and acquisitive growth. This meant they needed a streamlined and scalable process for acquiring new businesses.    

Challenge 

Due to a recent acquisition, Aferian’s internal structure lacked integration. They needed to work in a more unified way and establish a clear roadmap for their finance function to achieve their ambitious growth objectives.   

Solution 

To support their growth plans, we worked with them to create a connected and acquisition-ready finance function. Our change initiatives included: 

• A core finance function maturity assessment 
• Alignment and refinement of finance function goals and objectives 
• A prioritised list of initiatives to enable Aferian to support their growth plans 
• A clear roadmap of projects that achieve incremental goals aligned with overarching objective.  

Process 

To get Aferian to where they needed to be we ran a series of quantitative and qualitative assessments. We put together a finance strategy engagement to produce a detailed two year go-to guide. This comprised a half day workshop to deliver a clear roadmap for Aferian’s people, processes, and technology, that would help them achieve their vision and growth ambitions.  

We conducted more than 20 interviews and surveys with people from across the finance function and wider business and analysed the results producing a finance maturity assessment output which helped us understand: 

• Strengths and weaknesses 
• Areas requiring development 
• What the finance function needed to look like for Aferian to reach their end goal 
• Where investment, time and effort needed to be prioritised.  

Finally, we produced a series of change initiatives which helped Aferian identify where they are and where they need to be; this was added to the roadmap.  

Outcome 

After this engagement, Aferian were in a position where they could confidently move forward with making investment decisions to develop and improve their finance function incrementally through: 

• A prioritised list of change initiatives that enable finance to support the growth of an acquisitive business
• Expert guidance across the technology available on the market that best fits with Aferian
• A clear roadmap of people, process and systems change.