You can’t achieve healthy, controlled growth – or execute on a merger or acquisition – without strong fundamentals. To help you see where you are on the preparation continuum, we asked some of our interim financial executives what questions CEOs should be asking themselves to weed out unhealthy habits and activities from your company and promote healthy growth.

1. How much do you know about your competitors and what makes you different? Do you know your market share? Have you identified and sized potential new markets?
2. Do you really know why customers buy your product? When was the result of your last price increase?
3. Do you know your cost of capital?
4. Do you have easy access to the required capital to fund growth?
5. Will your finance or accounting department be able to handle the challenges that growth or an M&A event will bring?And, a very important one, even though it is not obviously financial:
6. Is your company’s culture ready for change?

Remember the Compaq/HP merger? There was so much negative publicity surrounding and following that merger that it seemed doubtful anyone would ever consider it a success. Some pundits still don’t, but just over a decade later you will – finally – find some positive comments. Those were big, historical companies; a 10-year wait was painful, but they could navigate through it. Would your company be able to withstand those same pains for that length of time?

At Cerius, our interim executives excel at helping companies succeed by choosing the proper growth path, and help them lay the groundwork prior to major organizational changes, such as growth, a merger, or acquisition.

We’ve prepared a paper to help CEO’s evaluate the strength of their financial controls and financial guidance. Putting the Right Horsepower into your Finance Department:Questions That Reveal Hidden Weaknesses in Financial Controls.