Building a finance function from zero

The challenge

When a former colleague of Ian’s became President of the Canadian business, a long-standing relationship turned into a defining engagement. The private-equity owners wanted change across the board — from the corporate office to a new production facility. The president moved fast, asking The STORY Group to handle ten roles right out of the gate.

The centrepiece wasn’t backfilling departures. It was building an FP&A function that didn’t yet exist — creating a capability from nothing, while the business was in motion.

The approach

We built the function role by role: six to seven FP&A hires, corporate accounting, and ultimately a VP of Finance to lead the team and all Canadian finance operations. In the president’s words, it became “the best planning team I have worked with.”

The work didn’t stop at finance. On the production side we placed project management, health and safety, quality, and the head of engineering for the new facility — breadth most finance-focused recruiters can’t credibly cover. Ian’s operational background and CPA designation let us move fluently across both worlds, working directly with hiring managers and the president to define roles and decide quickly.

Over three years we delivered roughly twelve placements spanning corporate and production. The VP of Finance we hired went on to help the business navigate a genuinely testing stretch — proof that the right leadership hire pays back long after the search closes.