In his late 20s, Jorge Pliego found himself financing a major expansion in Mexico—not by calling corporate for cash, but by rethinking the entire structure. At Procter & Gamble, he was given the chance to fund a new paper products facility locally, navigating tax and financing incentives until the deal carried “zero” interest cost, Pliego tells us. Convincing senior leaders in Mexico and at headquarters required clarity, confidence, and an understanding of the business beyond finance alone.
That moment reflects a career shaped by early responsibility and proximity to decision-makers. From ERP implementation work—where he adapted U.S. costing systems to Mexico’s 100% inflation environment—to treasury leadership, Pliego learned how finance decisions land inside real operating constraints, he tells us. Those lessons were tested again when he left P&G for Sara Lee, joining as the second employee in Mexico. Suddenly, he was learning how to import product, choose systems, hire teams, and manage risk without the safety net of a mature organization.
Read MoreAt Diageo, that operational grounding met strategy. As CFO of Mexico, Pliego helped lead a six-month effort to craft a plan to triple the business in three years, he tells us. Finance worked alongside marketing, sales, and operations to define investments, risks, and measurements, while leaders focused on inspiring people and course-correcting quickly.
Today, as CFO of Improving, Pliego carries those lessons into a faster, private-equity-backed environment. Speed matters, but discipline matters more. He’s shortened the close, sharpened data visibility, and applies the same lens to AI—calling it “a very hungry monster” that only delivers value when fed consistent, high-quality data, Pliego tells us.
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CFOTL: Right now, let’s find out about Improving, where you’re CFO today. Tell us about the company. What does it do, and what are its offerings?
Pliego: It’s a great company, Jack. We describe ourselves as a modern, digital IT consulting company—and a big part of the conversation today is, “How is AI impacting the business?” I like to explain it with a flywheel: on the outside you have AI, data, and applications, and in the center you have platforms. Over the last 12 to 18 months, a lot of companies have shifted investment toward AI, often hoping for quick efficiencies without fully knowing how to do it.
AI is like a hungry monster—you feed it data, it gives you output, and then it immediately wants more. So what we do at Improving is help companies understand what AI can do for them today, based on what they already have, and then assess what needs to change so AI becomes productive and a profitable investment. Usually that starts with data—making it better, more consistent, and with more history—and that often means modernizing apps and platforms, which is what we’ve been strong at all along.
Pliego: We’ve also developed a few agents to make our own work more efficient. One example is a tool we call Explorer. Many of our customers are large Fortune 500 companies with multiple platforms, apps, and data sets, and you often find inconsistencies—different versions of the “same” data, and confusion about the real source of truth. We don’t sell Explorer; we use it to generate insight and opportunities. It scans platforms, data, and applications and flags where things don’t match—like inconsistent data definitions, or pro forma views that didn’t incorporate an acquisition consistently across systems. We recently ran it for a large financial institution and it surfaced about 60 projects they need to address before an AI solution will generate real benefits. From the beginning, Improving has been collaborative and training-oriented—we help customers understand what’s happening, and we want them to own what we build. We don’t come in with templates and say, “Here’s your packaged solution—go run it.” That approach has created long-standing, productive relationships.
CFOTL: Can you tell us a little bit about the company’s capital structure—an abbreviated history, perhaps?
Pliego: We still have our founders running the business. Chris (Hyatt) is the CEO and founder, and Rick Diana leads the M&A side, and they’re still very much involved day to day. The company grew in a very interesting way—on the M&A front, without a lot of cash—by convincing other companies of similar size that joining forces would be good for them. That’s how the business grew to roughly $100 million before private equity joined us. In our case, that’s Trinity Hunt Partners, and they’ve been a fantastic partner.
Improving | www.improving.com | Dallas, TX