Justin ColverModern Finance Leadership

Article series

Why Finance SystemsShould Be Custom BuiltAround Your Business

Every business has different KPIs, reporting structures, revenue drivers, cost bases and planning processes.

For the same reason, expecting off-the-shelf software to perfectly support your reporting and forecasting processes rarely works in practice.

Would you download a suite of Excel models and use them to run your reporting and forecasting?

Unlikely! Every business has different KPIs, reporting structures, revenue drivers, cost bases and planning processes.

The reason it wouldn't work well is no different to the reason off-the-shelf software will never be a great solution for these activities.

The Historical Trade Off

Spreadsheets

  • Easy to use
  • Flexible
  • Version control issues
  • Errors and manual work
  • Hard to audit
  • Not scalable
  • Key person dependency

Software

  • Secure
  • Auditable
  • Scalable
  • Doesn't reflect how your business operates
  • Workarounds become necessary
  • Customisation limitations
  • Spreadsheets inevitably return

Custom Systems

  • Built around your business
  • Flexible and bespoke
  • Supports your processes and KPIs
  • No compromise on reporting design
  • Historically expensive to build
  • Required specialist development teams
  • Difficult for smaller businesses to justify