Senior leadership across finance, operations, and AI.

Most businesses between $5M and $100M in revenue don't need a full-time CFO. What they need is someone who can build financial infrastructure, produce board-ready reporting, and manage cash with the same discipline as a Fortune 500 finance team — without the $300K salary and benefits package.

That's what a fractional CFO engagement at Helm looks like. We embed into your business on a part-time or project basis and take ownership of the financial function. We build the reporting your board, lender, or sponsor needs to see. We manage cash so you're never surprised. And we make sure the numbers tell a story that drives better decisions — not just fills a spreadsheet.

This is especially critical for PE-backed companies navigating their first institutional reporting cycle, founder-led businesses outgrowing their bookkeeper, or any company preparing for a transaction where financial credibility is the difference between a deal and a missed opportunity.

Growth exposes every weakness in your operations. The processes that worked at $5M break at $20M. The reporting that satisfied a founder doesn't satisfy a sponsor. And the team that built the business isn't always the team that can scale it — at least not without better infrastructure underneath them.

We work inside your operations to identify where time and money are being lost, build the KPI frameworks that make performance visible, and design processes that hold up under pressure. For businesses integrating an acquisition, we manage the operational side of the transition — combining systems, aligning teams, and standardizing reporting so the thesis behind the deal actually plays out.

We don't hand you a process map and walk away. We stay in the work until the changes are embedded in how your team operates every day.

Every business owner eventually faces the same question: what happens next? Whether you're planning to sell, hand the business to the next generation, or simply want to grow with more intention, the financial and operational groundwork needs to start well before the moment arrives.

We help owners and leadership teams build value creation plans that are grounded in real numbers — not aspirational projections. We work through succession planning with the same rigor we bring to financial reporting. And for businesses preparing for a sale or recapitalization, we build the exit readiness infrastructure that buyers and investors expect to see: clean financials, documented processes, and a management team that can operate without the founder in the room.

The businesses that command the best outcomes at exit are the ones that prepared two years before they needed to. We help you start that clock.

Most businesses are past the question of whether AI matters. The question now is how to implement it without wasting money, creating risk, or buying tools that no one on the team actually uses. That's where we come in.

We approach AI the same way we approach every engagement at Helm: start with the business problem, not the technology. We assess your operations for genuine AI opportunities, build governance frameworks that protect the business, and implement pilots tied to specific P&L outcomes. Every recommendation comes with a business case. Every pilot gets measured against a baseline. And every engagement ends with your team owning the capability — not renting it from us.

This is not a technology consulting engagement. It's an operator-led effort to make your business more efficient, more informed, and harder to compete against.