Building the finance function from the ground up with Bloomerang’s Jeff Arensman

In this episode of Controllers Classified, host Erik Zhou sits down with Jeff Arensman, Controller at Bloomerang, to cover two important topics: building a finance function from scratch and the role of finance in acquisitions. 

For Jeff, the two are inextricably linked at Bloomerang. As the first finance hire at the company, his first task was supporting an acquisition that needed to close in just three weeks. He then quickly turned to building a strong foundation for the accounting and finance practice at the company through new processes, tools, and technology. Jeff covers how he spent his time in the first few years at Bloomerang, including how he approached team building, and then turns to his current priorities now four years in at the company (a big NetSuite implementation!). 

After sharing how he approached building a function, Jeff does a deep dive into considerations during acquisitions both on the buy and sell side. He details his extensive experience in acquisitions and highlights some of his best practices and learnings - including how important it is to add nuance and context to the models that bankers develop during the due diligence process. 

The episode closes with Jeff sharing the deep detective work he had to do to get to the bottom of one of his weirdest company expense moments early in his career. 

Key Quotes:

• “As I grew in my career and focused not just on debits and credits but on how everything affects the business as a whole, that really set me up”
• “I am the first finance hire here. I started and then they told me ‘we’re going to get this deal done and it's closing in 3 weeks’. So challenging to say the least” 
• “It took quite a long time to get things to a point where we could then say ‘ok now we can start doing the things that we need to do in order to scale this thing up’”
• “What worked and what we did when we started isn’t going to work now to take our company to $100M and beyond” 
• “Bankers may put a model together for you - but I found it to not be ideal. Because how the bankers look at it is not how we’re actually running the business” 
• “It’s amazing once you’re able to join two companies that really fit together, it’s crazy how fast things can go” 

Time Stamps

• (00:28) Jeff's journey into accounting
• (03:46) Learning through acquisition experience
• (06:12) Building the finance function at Bloomerang
• (16:59) How to implement processes that scale
• (28:39) Financial modeling approach for acquisitions
• (36:46) Post-acquisition integration considerations

Links

• Connect with Jeff Arensman
• Visit Bloomerang
• Connect with Erik
• Visit Brex