Advisory
Business advisory.
Business advisory for growing, mature companies and companies in special situations. We support owners and boards in decisions on strategy, profitability, reorganisation, management controlling, financing and turnaround management — from diagnosing the situation to implementing change in the organisation.
Business advisory is not about producing strategy presentations. We help owners and boards make decisions on growth, profitability, organisation, financing, transformation and crisis situations. Our goal is to prepare solutions that can be implemented straight away.
What we do
Scope of work.
Strategy and business model
Diagnosis of the situation, definition of direction, a map of initiatives, delivery metrics and investment decisions over a 1–3-year horizon.
Organisational advisory and company reorganisation
Designing structure, roles and decision rights. Improving internal processes, reducing operational friction, preparing for scale.
Management controlling
KPIs, management reporting, budgeting, and profitability calculation by product, customer and business line. The basis for informed decisions.
Turnaround management
Recovery plan, liquidity management, negotiations with creditors, interim CRO and CFO support at critical moments for the organisation.
Restructuring
Operational and financial restructuring, recovery plans, debt clean-up, refinancing and contract renegotiation.
Raising finance
Bank debt, mezzanine, equity, grants — preparing documentation and the model, and running the process with investors and banks.
Financial models and valuations
Multi-year models, scenarios, sensitivity analyses and independent valuations of businesses, trademarks and transactions.
Performance improvement
Diagnostics of cost, margin, working capital and return on investment. A concrete list of actions with a measurable financial effect.
Who we work with
Who we work with.
We support both growing companies and entities in a special situation requiring fast decisions.
Mid-sized owner-managed companies
Strategy, financing, professionalisation of management.
Companies in restructuring
Recovery plans, negotiations with creditors, refinancing.
Financial investors
Due diligence, transaction models, portfolio support.
Cooperation model
Ongoing decision support.
Not every decision requires an advisory project. In many situations, what matters most is a quick consultation with an expert who understands the business context and can point to the right course of action.
CFO Hotline.
Ongoing financial and controlling support for boards and business owners. Data-driven decisions and access to CFO-level competence — without a full-time hire.
See how it worksWhen
Typical situations where we help.
- The company has reached a growth ceiling and is looking for a new operating model or a strategic advisor for growing businesses.
- Ownership succession — professionalising management and separating the owner's role from the board's.
- Loss of profitability in a business line, falling EBITDA margin, or a liquidity problem requiring turnaround management.
- The need to refinance or restructure debt and renegotiate key contracts.
- A financial investor coming in — the need for management controlling, reporting and a corporate-governance standard.
- Reorganising the company after a merger, demerger or strategy change — new structure, roles and decision-making processes.
- Preparing for a sale of the company, raising an investor, or acquiring a competitor.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
Strategic advisory answers the question of “where” — direction, product portfolio, investment decisions. Organisational advisory answers the question of “how” — structure, roles, processes and the way teams work. In practice, one does not work without the other; in our projects we combine both areas.
Turnaround management is appropriate when continuity of operations is at risk — liquidity, bank covenants, key customers or suppliers. Operational restructuring concerns improving profitability at a company that is stable but not cost-optimal. We diagnose the situation before recommending a model.
Yes — for companies that need continuous access to CFO-level competence, we offer the CFO Hotline in three packages. The client buys the finance-director function together with Zwyrtek Group's legal, tax, M&A and AI backup.
Yes — in the CFO, COO and CRO areas, we offer interim management on a project basis, with a clear scope, goals and checkpoints for the board.
We most often combine bank debt with grants and mezzanine financing; in selected projects — capital from trade or financial investors. The choice of source follows from the business model and the repayment horizon.
We prepare a standard multi-year model in 3–6 weeks, depending on the availability of client data and the number of scenarios required by the board or an investor.
When the company enters a stage in which its existing way of managing stops being sufficient — not when an unsolvable problem appears. Typical moments include stalled growth, falling profitability despite rising sales, rapid scaling that outgrows the organisation, succession, preparation for an investor coming in or a sale of the company, and a liquidity crisis. A strategic advisor is also needed when the board lacks an impartial perspective: everyone in the company is involved in day-to-day operations and sees the situation from the same side. The value of the project lies in naming the real decision problem, setting priorities and driving the change through to implementation — not in producing a document.
When financial decisions start to outpace what accounting can handle, and the owner no longer has time to manage margin, cash and financing. Signals include: no reliable cash forecast, difficulty assessing the profitability of products and customers, talks with a bank conducted without a financial model, a planned investment or acquisition, and preparation for an investor coming in. In mid-sized companies, a full-time CFO is often not yet cost-justified — a subscription model or an interim CFO for a specific project works well here. The competence is available immediately, without recruitment and without the risk of a poor hire in a key role.
Accounting settles the past in line with regulations; controlling supports decisions about the future. The books answer the question of what the result was and what the tax liabilities are. Controlling answers the question of what the company is earning on today, which customer or product is destroying margin, how the result will change after a price or volume change, and how much cash will be available in eight weeks. Controlling uses accounting data but adds margin analysis, budgets, forecasts, scenarios and management indicators. Both functions are needed — the problem arises when the board tries to steer the company solely on the basis of financial statements that are two months old.
Yes. We support owners at every stage: from the decision on whether and when to sell, through preparing the company for the process, to negotiating and closing the transaction. Most value is created before the process starts — by tidying up the results, management data, contracts, ownership structure and reducing the company's dependence on the owner. In parallel, we work on the tax and legal side of the transaction and on what happens to the capital after the sale, including the Polish family foundation and family office. The process itself is run by the M&A team — business advisory is responsible for preparing the company and keeping ownership decisions consistent.
Yes. An investor buys predictability, so preparation means making the numbers and the plan credible. We tidy up controlling and management reporting, build a financial model with scenarios, verify the growth thesis, document revenue repeatability, and remove risks that reduce the price during due diligence. We also prepare the board for discussions and for the due-diligence process, in which inconsistent data is the most common source of problems. The scope covers tidying up the ownership structure, key contracts and employment matters. We work alongside the legal, tax and transaction teams, so that the company enters the process prepared rather than reactive.
Yes. In a liquidity crisis, the priority is cash and credibility with financing parties. We start with a short-term cash-flow plan on a weekly cycle, expenditure control, prioritising payments and a rapid working-capital analysis. In parallel, we hold talks with banks, lessors and key counterparties, preparing scenarios for debt restructuring or refinancing. We then decide which parts of the business to keep, scale back or close. In demanding situations we take on the interim CFO or CRO function so that decisions are made quickly and enforced. Response time is critical — the earlier a company acts, the wider the range of available solutions remains.
Yes. We offer interim management in the CFO, COO and CRO roles, and in selected situations also board-level support at a company during a transitional period. This model works well when a key person leaves suddenly, during a restructuring, during post-acquisition integration, and while a company is being prepared for a transaction. We agree the scope, goals, metrics and checkpoints with the owner or supervisory board before starting the engagement. The interim manager works with the backing of the whole group — tax, legal, accounting and technology — so decisions do not wait on outside opinions. We ultimately prepare for the handover of the function to a permanent hire.
A turnaround starts with stabilising cash, not with strategy. In the first weeks we establish the real liquidity position, set up expenditure controls, protect relationships with the bank and key suppliers, and identify the actions with the fastest impact on the result. The second stage is structural decisions: the product and customer portfolio, pricing, fixed costs, staffing, non-productive assets. The third stage is rebuilding the capacity to grow and introducing controlling that prevents the situation recurring. We run the whole process to a rhythm of weekly reviews with the owner and the board. A typical project takes from a few months to a year, depending on the scale of the problem and the time available.
Diagnosis with recommendations usually takes 4 to 8 weeks, depending on the scale of the company and data availability. A full strategic project covering direction, business model, financial plan and a map of initiatives is usually 2–4 months. Implementation is a separate stage and takes longer, because it concerns organisation, processes, technology and people — here we work in quarterly cycles with clear milestones. In crisis situations we shorten the first stage to 2–3 weeks to quickly launch actions that protect the result. We always agree the scope and timetable before starting work, together with checkpoints at which the board can verify the direction.
A subscription is ongoing access to management-level competence within an agreed monthly scope. It most often covers ongoing support for financial decisions, review of reporting and results, attendance at board meetings, monitoring budget delivery, and consultations on tax, legal and organisational matters. It works well at companies that need a CFO function but cannot justify a full-time hire, and at companies after a transaction where the investor expects regular reporting. We agree the scope, hours and contact model at the start and review it every quarter. Additional projects are delivered outside the subscription, on a separately agreed scope.
Yes. Family businesses make up a significant part of our practice. What is distinctive is that business decisions are intertwined with family relationships, private wealth and succession plans. We help separate the owner's role from the board's, introduce governance, set rules for distributions and reinvestment, prepare a successor, and design an ownership structure that ensures continuity — using the Polish family foundation and family-office solutions where the situation warrants it. In parallel, we professionalise management: controlling, reporting, KPIs and decision-making processes. We combine business advisory here with tax and legal advisory, since in family businesses these areas are decided together.
Yes, from a business perspective. We start by identifying processes where automation or artificial intelligence genuinely shorten time, lower cost or improve the quality of decisions — not by choosing a tool. We then assess organisational readiness: data quality and availability, process discipline, team competence and security and compliance rules. The next stage is a pilot with a clearly defined success metric and a decision on scaling. We run implementation together with the technology team and with change management, because the biggest risk is not the technology but managers and staff failing to adopt the solution. We measure the effect in financial terms.
Yes. A change of model — from product to service, from projects to subscription, from intermediation to owning a brand, or from the domestic market to export — changes the whole economics of the company: revenue structure, working-capital needs, team competencies and the way of selling. We start by calculating the financial consequences of the new model and comparing them with the scenario of continuing as before. We then design the transition path: what to launch first, how to finance the transition period, which people and systems are needed, and how to measure progress. We run the change in stages, so that the company does not lose profitability during the transformation or credibility with customers and financing institutions.
Do you need support with a business decision?
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