Value creation doesn’t happen in spreadsheets. It happens during handoffs between Finance and Go-to-Market, where growth can accelerate or stall.

At this year’s PEI Operating Partners Forum in New York, Chassi brought together senior operators from leading PE firms for a discussion hosted by Ryan Richards, VP of GTM at Chassi. The panel explored a question that defines execution in every portfolio: how can CFOs and CROs run the business from the same reality?

Panelists
John “JT” Turner, CRO Advisor, Permira
Tim Eng, Operating Partner, TPG
Jonathan Konkoly, Value Creation Director, Littlejohn & Co.
Bijal Sheth, Operating Principal, Pamlico Capital

Each spoke from personal experience inside companies and across portfolios. The shared message was clear: when Finance and GTM are out of sync, predictability disappears. When they align, the business compounds faster.

1. The CFO–CRO relationship defines whether a company scales or stalls

Turner has spent decades leading revenue teams through high growth and IPOs. His message was direct: alignment between the CFO and CRO determines whether a company scales or stalls.

“You always think they're the enemy. And what I learned pretty quickly… is that if you behave that way, it's probably going to be the GTM leader that goes before the CFO.”

— John “JT” Turner, CRO Advisor, Permira

He described how misalignment appears in different forecasts from FP&A and RevOps, in conflicting definitions, and in board materials that tell two versions of the same story.
“The problem is visible in ten minutes,” he said.

Turner emphasized proximity and transparency as the foundation of alignment. FP&A should sit close to sales, acting as a kind of CFO whisperer who understands the field and translates it back to Finance. RevOps should operate close enough to Finance to connect what is booked to what is billed and collected.

When those bridges exist, forecasts become credible and decisions move faster. When they do not, predictability disappears, and the CRO is often the first to be replaced. In this market, cash discipline is everything. For PE-backed companies, Turner called this not a cultural issue, but a form of operational risk management.

2. The real gap lies between revenue and cash

"The end results everybody tends to agree on, but it's the interim steps ... that sometimes we don't agree on.”

— Tim Eng, Operating Partner, TPG

Eng explained that most breakdowns happen in the middle of the process, not at the top.

“As a CFO, I care about interest payments, bonus cycles, and cash outflows,” he said. “Sales cares about hitting quota. Both are valid, but when they’re not synchronized, cash takes the hit.”

He described how sales teams hit their numbers by pushing products to distributors on flexible terms. The revenue looked strong on paper, but returns and credits later destroyed cash flow.

“The revenue was there. The cash wasn’t,” Eng said.

His fix was transparency.

“We began publishing all major cash flow events so everyone could see when cash was truly needed.”

— Tim Eng, Operating Partner, TPG

Eng framed alignment as education. Finance cannot expect GTM to make cash-conscious decisions if they never see the timing of obligations. GTM cannot expect Finance to back new investments if they cannot show when those investments will turn into cash.

3. Truth starts with language and systems, not dashboards

“If you ask sales what ‘bookings’ means and then ask finance, and you get two different answers, you already know what's wrong.”

— Jonathan Konkoly, Value Creation Director, Littlejohn & Co.

Konkoly focuses on cleaning up the operational plumbing beneath the strategy. For him, alignment starts with shared language and consistent data.

He outlined a simple but disciplined framework:

1. Define core terms.
   
   

2. Store the right data in the right systems, including contracts, pricing, and start dates..
   
   

3. Make sure systems communicate.
   
   

4. Build a recurring rhythm around what can be billed, collected, or at risk.

Truth, he said, is not a dashboard. It’s a practice the business repeats week by week.

Bridging the gap between revenue and cash requires more than visibility. It starts with consistent definitions, sound systems, and accountability for how the business actually runs.

4. Operating partners are becoming translators, not just sponsors

Sheth sees the same misalignment across his portfolio. In one case, the CFO was planning around debt covenants and liquidity while the CRO was planning to expand headcount. Both were right individually but disconnected collectively.

“It's all about collaboration and trust.”

— Bijal Sheth, Operating Principal, Pamlico Capital

Once they reframed the conversation around hitting the 2026 and 2027 plan, it stopped being a headcount debate and became a discussion about ROI, productivity, and timing.

For Sheth, this represents the evolving role of the Operating Partner, not just a facilitator but a translator, ensuring Finance and GTM are solving the same problem from the same facts.

5. What this means for PE operators

The conversation underscored what most operators already know but few can quantify: alignment between Finance and GTM is no longer optional. It is the operating system for value creation.

1. Alignment is structural
   It depends less on personalities and more on how data, systems, and cadences connect. As Turner noted, “when RevOps is red, the CRO probably is too.”
   
   

2. Lead-to-Cash is the new operating system
   The flow from lead to deal to invoice to cash is where value is created or lost. When that chain breaks, the symptoms appear as missed forecasts, delayed collections, or margin leakage.
   
   

3. Budget alignment matters as much as forecast alignment
   Sheth noted that Finance cannot plan capacity from the top down while GTM builds a bottom-up plan that never reconciles. The two have to meet in the middle, or every forecast starts off misaligned. Turner described this as the real work, where top-down targets meet bottom-up execution. Budget season often exposes these gaps, making it the right moment to bring Finance and GTM together around one shared model.
   
   

4. Cadence matters more than tools
   Weekly and monthly reviews of bookings, billing, and collections determine whether Finance and GTM stay aligned. Without that rhythm, even strong data cannot drive outcomes. Real-time visibility across those metrics allows teams to operate and decide at the speed this market demands.
   
   

5. Data has moved to the front of the value-creation agenda
   Achieving one operational truth across CRM, ERP, and billing is no longer a back-office project. It is the foundation for decision-making.

For CFOs, CROs, Operating Partners, and boards, the takeaway was clear: stop treating GTM and Finance as separate disciplines; they are two perspectives on the same process. When they share a single view of the Lead-to-Cash flow, with shared definitions and cadence, the company finally operates as a single system instead of disconnected teams chasing different numbers.

Where Chassi fits in

Every panelist described the same tension Chassi helps resolve: giving Finance and GTM one shared view of the Lead-to-Cash process. By modeling that flow directly from systems of record, Chassi unifies Finance, GTM, RevOps, and FP&A around the same reality.

The conversation can then move from “whose data is right?” to “what do we do next?”

The discussion in New York wasn’t about frameworks or buzzwords. It was about returning to the fundamentals that drive every portfolio’s value creation: truth, timing, and trust.