Case 5: 🧾 Post-Merger Reporting Chaos – When Integration Becomes a CFO Bottleneck
A Central European beverage company had recently acquired two smaller competitors in neighboring countries. What began as a strategic growth play quickly turned into a reporting nightmare.
Each entity had its own chart of accounts, ERP instance, and local compliance logic. The CFO team was expected to consolidate results in under four weeks – but had no unified reporting layer or data harmonization tools.
🧩 The Traditional Way – Manual Reconciliation, Delayed Insights
Typical Symptoms:
- Entity-level reports exported into Excel, manually mapped to group structure
- Inconsistent revenue recognition policies across acquired units
- No real-time group visibility on working capital, margins, or intercompany flows
- External consultants brought in to “clean up” month-end chaos
🕒 Outcome:
- Over 100 hours spent monthly on reconciliation
- CFO’s team stuck explaining variances instead of driving integration value
- Board updates delayed or based on outdated figures
💡 Where It Goes Wrong
- ❌ Systems not integrated, and no interim logic layer built
- ❌ Data definitions differ across units, creating reporting errors
- ❌ Finance team spends time formatting instead of analyzing
- ❌ Integration fatigue leads to errors and low adoption of group tools
✅ The Efficient Alternative – Integration Playbooks and AI-Powered Consolidation
At Dr. Zwezich Consulting, we support post-merger teams with tools and logic that:
- Auto-map legacy account structures to the group’s unified reporting model
- Flag inconsistent treatments across revenue and cost centers
- Recommend reconciliation steps with prompt-based workflows
- Enable clean monthly roll-ups even before full system integration is completed
🧠 Why It Matters
M&A deals are judged not by announcement, but by integration.
Finance must provide clarity fast – otherwise value erodes silently through inefficiencies.
By combining automation and CFO-centric playbooks, we help you deliver on Day 100 expectations without burning out your team.