Scaling up for growth

1. Getting the right high performing
Finance Function and Eco-system
As a CFO I needed to deliver high quality information to our shareholders and
Executive team while growing the business quickly and internationally, but
with a lean finance team to an efficient workday deadline.
There is a lot of noise in the market around digital disruption and CFO 2.0.
What is clear is Cloud is here to stay. Finance in some ways has taken the
leadership in tech efficiency, given finance functions often have less than 7
heads, with a CFO; Group FC; Group FP&A; Financial Accountant; Credit
Controller and Accounts Payable not unusual.
Finance career progression is difficult to see even in a growth environment
after perhaps going multiple rounds of finance. Private Equity, in particular, but
Venture Capital backed companies too are demanding in being hungry for
data. Every role needs to have strong logical and analytical skills across the
finance function.
The CFO and their Finance function may be a strategic thought leaders raising
vital funds for the business and be scoring high 9’s out of 10 but can also let
itself down when paying employee expenses; key suppliers (including Board
members) or lose focus on cash control and debtor management.
The main deliverable for the month is often the Board pack followed later in
the month by the Board meeting. This can take a significant chunk out of the
finance’s typical 19 work days a month.
Finance is not often “audit” or “DD” ready at any given month. It creates a
project in itself. Projects are often under-resourced from the outset including
the initial matching of the business requirements to the solution that needs to
be rolled out. This leads to a poor first impression internally.

2. Getting the right high performing
Finance Function and Eco-system
As the business gets bigger the key billing system is often another third-party
large database that often needs Business Intelligence tools to bring into a
Finance System.
It is my belief even with a small finance team that a strong transactional
process such as seen in a shared service function -Order to cash; Purchase to
Pay and Record to Report can be achieved with the right systems and
leveraging other parts of the organisation such as Account Management. Cash
is key – and understanding the daily large movements is vital. Efficient use of
Enterprise Content Management techniques can organise information ready
for due diligence and audit at any time – “do it while its fresh!!”
In choosing the right Finance system I was looking for a Cloud based system
with restful API’s that could provide a top down Global Consolidated view with
drill down capability using roles-based control, with dynamic real time
reporting within a tight implementation timescale. The Go Live date was
ultimately signed off as achieved within 63 elapsed days of project start date in
time for the annual audit and Board meeting.
I had always though that the 100-120 day “good” delivery time scale could be
beaten and through assembling a strong team largely from the outset we beat
even my expectations despite the usual project surprises along the way.
It was critical to build and lead the right finance team with the same shared
vision. As CFO I was engaging almost daily as lead Sponsor with the NetSuite
Project Services team, which meant we were able to divide roles efficiently and
see near immediate outcomes. The biggest challenge was ensuring a stable
and detailed data migration file which we loaded for three years data.
We also had the normal challenges of managing the daily tasks while
implementing a system at this pace with a relatively small team. I mitigated the
risk by bringing in a Functional Consultant Ryan Newman who I had previously

3. Getting the right high performing
Finance Function and Eco-system
worked with. Invariably as a CFO whether interim or permanent you are faced
with multi conflicting projects. You need a team around you that you can trust.
I chose NetSuite OneWorld to run mission-critical business processes including
key financial reports , billing, procure to pay, order-to-cash, revenue
recognition, EFT payment upload to Barclays, multi-currency, fixed asset
module, multi-language, intercompany transactions, and multi-country
taxation compliance. It provided the flexibility, agility and scalability the
Company needed to sustain its rapid growth and to gain a real-time view of the
customer data across multiple business units, subsidiaries and countries. Using
the Finance Eco-system of Record through API tokens and SuiteApps we could
link to other systems of record creating one source of the truth across the
organisation.
Some of the successful outcomes of the project included:
 Dynamic live and locked financial reporting and forecasting through
Solution 7 including Board packs and Statutory reporting
 Bank reconciliation for treasury management and EFT payment uploads
 Strong API’s to Optical Character Recognition procure to pay Kefron system
both with and without purchase orders.
 Superior multi-subsidiary management enabling real-time reporting across
all subsidiaries in multi countries; using prebuilt capabilities for tax
compliance
 Multi-currency transactions and reporting in multiple currencies using
automatic daily FX rates pre-built using Xignite
 Scalability to multiple jurisdictions with controlled access to third party
accountants
 Simplified recurring billing on complex multi-year contracts
 Syncs with BambooHR for Employee on and offboarding
 Transfers to Certify for expense management
 Building links to Salesforce for Customer onboarding

4. Getting the right high performing
Finance Function and Eco-system
The biggest success was a highly motivated and efficient team who had access
to one source of the truth, who had much more time to work on other value
add work throughout the organisation and respond to less ad-hoc requests
quickly. We created a number of regular request standard reports to deliver to
the wider company.
If you need help with any of the following please do not hesitate to get in
touch:
 help you implement NetSuite and migrate data from other accounting
system
 work with you to define requirements
 work with the SuiteApp community and help implement some of the FIN
ECOSYSTEM of RECORD
 help you set up your FP&A tool - Solution 7
 help you choose a purchase to pay and expense management tool and
implement
 help you and can support a due diligence process including a Dataroom
 manage a top 10 accounting firm to minimise cost of stock option
support and management of Good exit process
 help review legal documents -commercial and corporate finance
 support you towards Investor ready business plans and cohorts
 improve the month end close process
 speed up the year-end financial statements
 bridge the gap to other ecosystems
 provide leadership and motivation to a finance team