Scaling an international business requires more than growth. It requires the systems, governance, data and teams capable of supporting that growth without adding unnecessary complexity. For finance leaders, this creates a demanding but important challenge. They must help the business move at pace, while ensuring that performance remains visible, risk is understood and decisions are made with discipline.
Gary McGaghey has spent much of his career operating in this kind of environment. With senior finance and executive experience across FMCG, beverages, pharmaceuticals, digital marketing services and integrated facilities management services, he has worked in listed, privately owned and private equity backed businesses across multiple geographies. His background includes M&A, carve-outs, integrations, refinancing, global business services and transformation programmes, giving him a broad view of what makes international businesses work at scale.
For McGaghey, the starting point is that finance must be both rigorous and practical. A finance function has to provide reliable reporting, strong controls and good governance, but it also has to support the business in making better decisions. In complex organisations, the value of finance is not only in what it records. It is in the clarity it brings to performance, the questions it helps leaders ask and the confidence it provides when choices need to be made.
That is especially important in businesses that have grown internationally or through acquisition. As companies expand, they often inherit different systems, reporting practices, processes and ways of working. Some of this variation may reflect genuine local market needs, while some may simply create duplication or inconsistency. The task for finance is to help the organisation distinguish between the two: preserving local responsiveness where it matters, while building common standards where consistency improves performance.
This distinction is central to McGaghey’s view of scalable finance leadership. In a global business, uniformity is not always the answer. Different markets may face different customer expectations, regulatory requirements and operational pressures. A finance model that ignores those differences risks becoming too remote from the business. But too much variation can also weaken visibility and make it harder to manage performance. The most effective approach is to create a common language around reporting, governance and decision-making, while giving local teams the room to operate effectively.
In his current role as Group CFO of a leading private equity owned international integrated facilities management company, McGaghey is working in a sector where this balance is particularly important. Facilities management is operationally complex and highly people led. Customers rely on service consistency, responsiveness and trust, often across multiple sites and markets. For a business in this sector, scalable systems and better data are not simply internal finance priorities. They help support clearer accountability, stronger performance visibility and a better customer experience.
This is why finance transformation should not be seen as a narrow functional project. In a large international business, finance data influences decisions about operations, team efficiency, investment, procurement, integration, resourcing and customer service delivery. If that data is inconsistent or slow to produce, the business loses time and confidence. If it is reliable and well understood, leaders can respond more quickly and with greater precision.
McGaghey’s experience in global business services has reinforced the importance of building common platforms carefully. Shared services, standardised reporting and consistent processes can create significant benefits, but only when they are designed around the needs of the business rather than imposed as abstract efficiency measures. A good finance operating model should make the business easier to run, not simply easier to report on.
That requires close collaboration between finance and the wider organisation. Operational leaders understand the realities of delivery. Regional teams understand local market conditions. Functional specialists bring expertise in areas such as technology, procurement, people and governance. Finance can help connect these perspectives by providing the structure, data and discipline needed to make better decisions. But it cannot do so effectively if it works in isolation.
McGaghey is careful not to frame transformation as the achievement of one individual. In any large business, progress depends on the quality of the team around the table and the people delivering change across the organisation. The CFO may play an important role in setting direction, maintaining discipline and ensuring that the financial implications are understood, but execution is collective. Strong finance leadership is therefore as much about building capability in others as it is about personal expertise.
This people focus is a consistent theme in McGaghey’s career. He has placed emphasis on talent identification, mentoring and the development of high-performing teams, seeing the finance function as a place where commercial judgement should be built, not just technical competence. In modern businesses, finance professionals need to understand more than accounting standards and reporting cycles. They need to understand the commercial model, the customer proposition and the operational drivers of performance.
Building that capability takes time. It requires leaders who can set clear expectations, give people room to grow and create an environment where challenge is encouraged. In finance, this is particularly important because the function must often raise uncomfortable points. A healthy finance culture is one where people can question assumptions constructively, escalate risks early and support the business without simply agreeing with it.
In private equity backed environments, these qualities become even more important. The pace is often quick, the performance agenda is clear and leadership teams are expected to make decisions with urgency. That can be energising, but it also places pressure on the quality of information and the strength of the operating model. A scalable finance function gives the business a firmer base from which to act, ensuring that growth is supported by visibility, governance and control.
Integration is a good example. Acquisitions can bring strategic opportunity, but the benefits are only realised when businesses are integrated properly. That does not mean forcing every market or business unit into identical ways of working overnight. It means identifying the areas where alignment creates value, such as reporting, data, controls and systems, while managing change in a way that people can absorb. Integration is as much an organisational challenge as it is a technical one.
McGaghey’s view is that good integration should create value beyond the initial transaction case. Immediate efficiencies may matter, but the broader opportunity lies in building a stronger platform for future performance. Better data can improve decision-making. Clearer processes can reduce friction. Stronger systems can support growth. More consistent reporting can help leaders see the business more clearly. Together, these foundations allow an international business to operate with greater confidence.
They also create the basis for more advanced technology. Many companies are now exploring how artificial intelligence can support forecasting, analysis, productivity and operational insight. McGaghey sees the opportunity, but he is pragmatic about the sequence. AI depends on consistent, reliable and well governed data. If a business has fragmented systems or unclear reporting definitions, AI will struggle to produce meaningful value. If the foundations are strong, AI can become a useful tool for identifying patterns, improving efficiency and supporting better decisions.
This has particular relevance in service led sectors such as facilities management. Better data and technology which joins up financial and operational metrics, can support more informed conversations with customers, clearer performance tracking and improved operational responsiveness. The objective is not technology for its own sake. It is to help the business work better for customers and colleagues, making information more useful and decisions more timely.
The customer dimension is important. Scalable finance functions can sometimes be discussed in purely internal terms, but their impact should be felt beyond the finance team. When leaders have better visibility, they can allocate resources more effectively. When reporting is clearer, accountability improves. When systems are more consistent, teams spend less time reconciling information and more time acting on it. In a service business, those improvements can support more reliable delivery and stronger customer confidence.
For McGaghey, the role of the CFO is therefore both strategic and practical. It involves helping the business understand where it is today, where it is heading and what foundations are needed to get there. It requires the ability to manage detail without losing sight of the bigger picture. It also requires the judgement to know when to standardise, when to adapt and when to challenge.
This is where experience across different sectors and geographies becomes valuable. International businesses rarely fit neatly into a single model. They require leaders who can understand complexity, work across cultures and build alignment without oversimplifying the realities on the ground. McGaghey’s career has given him a clear appreciation of those dynamics, particularly in organisations undergoing growth, integration and ownership change.
As companies continue to become more data led, the finance function will remain central to their ability to scale. But the best finance functions will not be those that simply produce more reports or introduce more systems. They will be those that help the business understand itself more clearly, act more confidently and build the foundations for sustainable growth.
For Gary McGaghey, that is the real purpose of scalable finance leadership. It is not about centralising for the sake of control, or transforming for the sake of activity. It is about creating a finance function that supports the business, strengthens decision-making, enables teams and ultimately helps customers receive a more consistent and reliable service. In international businesses, that combination of discipline, collaboration and practical insight is what allows growth to be sustained.
