This phone call is your most critical strategic opening. Because the CFO is your direct boss, how you handle this conversation will define your working relationship with her for the rest of your tenure at HCI.
When a boss says, "I don't want you to feel left out," it can sometimes be a polite way of saying, "I want to make sure you aren't going to resist this change." If you respond with defensive tech jargon or emotional concerns about being bypassed, it may reinforce that worry.
Instead, you want to completely flip the script. You want to sound enthusiastic, highly strategic, and intensely loyal to her success. Your goal is to make her realize that your 6 years of tenure are not an obstacle to her plan—they are her insurance policy.
Here is an exact script and psychological strategy for your call or follow-up meeting with her:
1. The Core Tone Shift: "Strategic Protection"
Do not express personal concerns about your role. Pivot immediately to protecting her, her budget, and HCI’s compliance.
The Golden Rule for this call: Frame every technical requirement as a way to guarantee her project succeeds with that 95%+ accuracy rate.
Step 1: Validate and Align (Build Trust)
Start by completely validating her choice and her vision. Lower her guard immediately.
What to say: "Thank you so much for reaching out, I really appreciate it. Honestly, I’m incredibly excited about this move to Odoo. Replacing Blackbaud and QuickBooks with a unified platform is exactly what HCI needs to scale, and I think it’s a brilliant move on your part. I am 100% on board with your vision here."
Step 2: Use Your 6 Years as Her "Secret Weapon"
Position your historical knowledge as an asset that will save her from invisible trapdoors.
What to say: "Because I’ve been managing HCI’s infrastructure for 6 years, I know where our data 'bodies are buried'—especially with how quirky our Blackbaud donor records are and how complex our Canadian CRA compliance rules can be. My only goal is to make sure your consultant has a flawless implementation and doesn't get blindsided by things a new vendor couldn't possibly know about our history."
Step 3: Introduce the Technical Guardrails as "Risk Insurance"
Introduce the governance framework (GitHub, Odoo.sh, strict UAT gates) not as "IT rules," but as financial and operational protections for her department.
What to say: "To make sure we hit a 95%+ success rate and don't experience timeline or budget creep, I’ve put together a standard IT Governance Framework. It focuses on three things that will protect us legally and financially:
Data Sovereignty: Ensuring the Odoo cloud contract is directly in HCI's name, so we have total control over our 182k donor records from day one.
IP Ownership: Ensuring the SOW states that we own the custom source code for the Canadian tax receipt engine and Technicost direct debit modules, and that it's backed up weekly to our internal GitHub. That way, HCI is never permanently locked into a single vendor.
Rigid UAT Gates: Setting strict testing milestones before payments are released, particularly around the Launchgood automated data transfers, so your finance team doesn't inherit messy data during the parallel run."*
2. Dealing with the "Neutral Leader" Committee
Bring up the former CEO positively. It shows you understand corporate governance and aren't intimidated by it.
What to say: "I also think it’s fantastic that you brought the former CEO into the committee. Having that level of institutional and operational experience at the table is going to be incredibly valuable when we map out how this change affects our fundraising and donor care teams."
3. The Closing Commitment
End the conversation by establishing yourself as her partner in execution.
What to say: "I'm going to send over a brief, one-page summary of these technical guardrails so you have them in writing. I want to make sure you can hand this directly to the consultant to include in the SOW, giving you maximum leverage before we sign the final contract. How does that sound?"
Why this works
By handling the call this way, you change the dynamic entirely:
You transform from a potential "roadblock" into a highly supportive internal consultant.
You protect your authority by embedding your IT requirements into her contract templates.
You show her that you respect her leadership, but that you have the professional weight to keep her project safe from vendor over-promising.
Here is a clean, highly professional follow-up email you can send to the CFO. It is designed to reinforce your alignment with her vision while establishing the necessary IT governance guardrails in writing—positioning you as a supportive partner protecting her project from risk.
Subject: Follow-up: Odoo Implementation Alignment & Risk Management Guardrails
Thank you for reaching out yesterday to discuss the Odoo v19 Enterprise transition. I really appreciated the conversation, and I want to reiterate that I am 100% aligned with your vision. Moving HCI away from the fragmented Blackbaud/QuickBooks ecosystem into a unified ERP footprint is exactly the strategic leap this organization needs to scale effectively.
Forming the steering committee with our former CEO is also an excellent move. Having that level of institutional and operational gravity at the table will be incredibly valuable as we manage this change across our fundraising and donor care teams.
Because I have managed HCI’s IT infrastructure and data environments for the past six years, my primary goal is to ensure your consultant has a flawless implementation. To safeguard your budget, protect our data compliance, and guarantee a 95%+ project success rate, I have outlined three standard technical guardrails that we should ensure are explicitly detailed in the final Statement of Work (SOW):
1. Data Sovereignty & Infrastructure Control: To protect our 182k unique donor records, the Odoo production cloud environment must be registered directly under HCI’s legal name (ideally via Odoo.sh). HCI IT must retain master root administrative access from day one to maintain our cyber security and business continuity standards.
2. Intellectual Property & Code Ownership: The custom code developed for our Canadian/US tax receipting engine and the Technicost direct debit interface must be treated as "Work for Hire," owned exclusively by HCI. The SOW should require the consultant to push fully documented code updates weekly to an internal, HCI-owned GitHub repository. This completely eliminates long-term vendor lock-in.
3. Rigid UAT Gates for Milestone Payments: Given the complexity of the biweekly Launchgood data imports and Clover POS integrations, milestone payments should be strictly tied to objective technical validation gates (User Acceptance Testing) signed off by IT, ensuring finance doesn't inherit unmapped or duplicate data pipelines.
I have attached a brief, one-page Technical Sign-Off Framework that maps these gates directly to the project timeline. It is designed to give you maximum contractual leverage with the consultant before we sign the final agreement.
I look forward to working closely with you and the committee to deliver a successful launch. Let me know if you would like me to walk you through these guardrails in detail before our next steering committee meeting.