Preparing for Magic: Inside Frontenac’s 2026 CFO Forum

Hiring, ten-minute cashflow forecasts, and the question nearly every buyer asks eventually. A day in the room with the finance leaders of Frontenac's portfolio companies.

Chicago, IL

More than half of all hiring decisions turn out to be mistakes, according to management guru Peter Drucker. Roughly half of generative AI projects fail. And every exit comes down to whether a buyer believes your numbers.

Those three uncomfortable facts framed the 2026 Frontenac CFO Forum last month. A lucky thirteen finance leaders from the Frontenac portfolio spent a day in Chicago working on one shared problem: how to get better odds and avoid rolling the dice at exit.

The night before set the tone. Over dinner, a magician worked the room. It was a fitting warm-up since the best tricks are mostly preparation the audience never sees. The next morning was all about the preparation.

"Which One, Coach?"

The talent session, led by Steve Fekety and Kevin Lyons of Frontenac's Portfolio Resources Group (PRG), opened with two photos side by side. One showed a grinning kid on a kickboard. The other showed an Olympic butterfly swimmer mid-stroke. The job description on the left read "fast, strong, experienced swimmer; competitive, a team player," and it fit both. The scorecard on the right read "three or more Olympic golds across at least two strokes," and it fit only one.

That was the case for prescriptive, outcome-based hiring scorecards, drawing on the ghSMART method. A job description lists what someone has achieved, likely milestones they've already hit in the past. A scorecard defines what they need to accomplish to be successful in the new environment.

The session closed on a question every finance leader now faces: what does an AI-enabled finance hire really look like? The group's answer was someone who automates repeatable work and turns ambiguity into structure, rather than waiting for perfect data and escalating.

From Demo to Deployment

The AI session, led by Frontenac's Casey Slager, skipped the hype. Instead, portfolio CFOs showed what they built with AI and what has happened since. Honk CFO Morgan Hughes built an automated 13-week cashflow forecast. Python scripts and APIs pull receivable aging and unbilled jobs automatically, with toggles for base, downside, and upside cases. The output refreshes weekly, in a matter of minutes, supported by routine data integrity checks.

The discussion concluded on governance. PRG covered data leakage, prompt injection, and SaaS vendors that quietly switch on AI features inside tools companies already pay for. Do you know what AI your vendors have enabled?

Time Kills Deals

The afternoon belonged to exits. Specifically, exit readiness. Frontenac's Mark Grosshans was joined by Scott Walti and Adam Catlett of RSM. Mark reinforced the idea that the disciplines that hold up in diligence take time to develop. Across areas like systems, process, people, reporting, and metrics, buyers will essentially test everything: coverage, data quality, depth of team, accuracy of forecasts. The same work that helps reassure a future buyer also makes the business run better today. Every late surprise erodes some of the buyer's confidence and invites renegotiation. The companies that are best positioned to come out ahead are the ones that find and fix their own problems first.

Thank you, CFOs and until next time!

About Frontenac

Frontenac is a Chicago-based private equity firm. The firm focuses on investing in lower middle market buyout transactions in the consumer, industrial, and services industries. Frontenac works in partnership with established operating leaders, through an executive-centric approach called CEO1ST®, which seeks to identify, acquire, and build market-leading companies through transformational acquisitions and operational excellence. Over the last 55 years, Frontenac has built a franchise working with over 350 owners of mid-sized businesses as they address complex transition issues of liquidity, management enhancement, and growth planning. For more information, visit https://www.frontenac.com.