Purcel spoke with CFOworld about establishing the company's finance organization, influencing outside the finance department, and the importance of saying "no."

, our founder Dave Anderson was still on the board. He had been appointed by the Bush administration to serve as Undersecretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, so he had to step down from any company board. This gave us the opportunity to bridge a gap from what had been an entrepreneurially-run company to one that was run by professional managers. We've since brought [Anderson] back into the company as chairman emeritus, but that period was really crucial for us. There were some things that we really needed to affirm our commitment to. One was being a public company. We had over 13 million shares accountable; we couldn't be run like a private company anymore. We also had to commit ourselves to franchising.

I certainly don't take full credit for the transformation. We have a phenomenal board of directors. I give them a lot of credit for their stewardship of the company during that time. I wouldn't say that there are big names on , but our board members are all great business people, and all have expertise in different areas. We have a process in place for filling board vacancies where, instead of pulling a name out from the industry haphazardly, we systematically ask, where is the company today? What don't we have represented on the board that we might need?