Two finance teams share what triggered the move, what changed, and what they'd do differently.
At some point, your finance system stops fitting the company it was built to support.
The entities multiply. The currencies change. The close gets longer. The spreadsheets get more complicated. And suddenly, your finance team is spending more time stitching systems together than actually running finance.
That was the starting point for our conversation on 9 September with two finance teams who had been through it themselves.
Connor van de Werken, Group Finance Director at Baller League, and Harry Woods, Head of Finance & BI at BeZero Carbon, joined Rasmus Christensen, Light's Implementation Lead, to talk about what triggered their moves, what changed afterwards, and what they would do differently.
The problem isn't always scale
Both businesses had something in common: their finance complexity grew faster than their headcount.
The old assumption was that companies scaled first and expanded internationally later.
That sequence has changed. Companies are opening entities earlier, for customers, funding structures, talent and opportunity. Finance has to support that complexity before the team grows to match it.
So how do you know you've outgrown your system?
The panel shared a few of the signals they had seen first-hand:
- Your close is getting longer as the business gets more complex.
- Different entities are being managed in different ways.
- Every new requirement means adding another tool.
- And perhaps the biggest one: there's a spreadsheet that has become a second source of truth.
That last one is particularly telling.
Once leadership starts relying on a spreadsheet that sits outside the ledger, your finance team becomes the reconciliation layer between two versions of reality.
What changed?
Connor walked through what actually changed in the day-to-day, particularly around procure-to-pay, approvals, invoices and payment runs, and what it meant for the team.
“Payments and invoicing felt like a race every week to be ready for the Friday payment run. Automating that removed a huge chunk of the month end. Then it was having one system rather than four disconnected tools. We can now run four entity month ends at the same time.”
Harry shared the BeZero Carbon perspective, including what happens when you're building an international finance function while the business is still moving quickly.
“It's not only that it's better and more efficient. It's nicer for the accountant. She isn't flicking between six different systems.”
When should you actually make the move?
The panel was refreshingly honest about this too.
The trigger isn't simply being unhappy with your software.
It's the gap between the shape of your company and the shape of your finance system, and whether that gap is getting bigger.
Watch the full session on demand
The full session includes the Q&A, with Connor and Harry sharing the practical details of their migrations, what they moved first, what they kept and what they would do differently.
