Your finance director mentions the system needs upgrading.
The software provider sends over a quote.
Implementation timeline: six months.
Cost: substantial.
You sign off on it. What else can you do?
Six months later, the system is live. Sort of. Reports still take three days to compile. Half the team refuses to use it properly. And you’re paying monthly fees for features nobody understands.
Sound familiar?
The hidden cost of skipping the discovery phase
Most businesses approach finance system upgrades the wrong way round.
They start with the solution instead of the problem.
A software salesperson shows you a demo. Everything looks slick with real-time dashboards and automated workflows; it’s cloud-based, and you can access it on your phone.
All the things you’re supposed to want.
You get a proposal, sign a contract, and then implementation begins.
That’s when reality hits.
Your purchase invoice approval process doesn’t fit the standard workflow.
- The integration with your company’s management system requires custom development.
- Your VAT structure is more complex than the consultant anticipated.
- The reporting format your board needs isn’t available out of the box.
Suddenly, your fixed-price quote isn’t so fixed. The timeline extends, your frustration mounts, and you’re wondering why nobody spotted these issues before you committed twenty grand plus on software, migration fees and internal time.
It’s because nobody asked the right questions before you bought.
Common finance system implementation mistakes
Finance systems fail for predictable reasons.
The software itself usually works fine. The problem is the gap between what the system does and what your business actually needs.
That gap only becomes visible when you try to use it.
1. Your processes don’t match the template.
Every business operates slightly differently. Standard software assumes standard processes, and when yours doesn’t fit, you’re left forcing square pegs into round holes.
2. Integration requirements were underestimated.
Your finance system doesn’t exist in isolation. It needs to talk to your sector-specific systems, your payroll software, and your CRM. Each integration point is a potential failure point. Miss one, and you’re back to manual data entry.
3. Nobody mapped where time disappears.
You know reporting is slow. But do you know why? Is it data entry? Reconciliation? Manual consolidation? Chasing information from other departments? Without identifying the specific bottlenecks, your new system might just be a faster way of doing the wrong things.
4. Training gets treated as an afterthought.
Your team has spent years developing workarounds for your current system. They know exactly how to get things done, even if it’s inefficient. A new system dismantles all that institutional knowledge. If they don’t understand why the change was necessary and how to use it effectively, they’ll find ways to avoid it.
These expensive problems are entirely avoidable. But only if someone looks for them before implementation starts.
What is a finance systems discovery workshop
Proper discovery workshops aren’t a couple of video calls where you describe your business to a consultant.
It’s forensic investigation. You need someone to spend time in your office, watching how work flows through your business. Not how the process map says it should work. How it really works.
How our Strategy 2 Action discovery workshops work
Our discovery workshops take a minimum of two days on-site. Being there in person is essential because body language tells you things people won’t say out loud. When someone hesitates before answering a question about their process, it’s often because they’re working around a problem they’ve accepted as normal. That context disappears on Teams.
During those two days, we’re conducting individual and group interviews across the entire business. Not just finance. We’re talking to operations managers, bookkeepers, sales teams, and project leads. Anyone who touches the finance system or depends on its output.
An example Strategy 2 Action discovery workshop looks like this:
- We’re sitting with the person who processes purchase invoices, understanding exactly what they do when a supplier sends a PDF that doesn’t match the purchase order. We’re interviewing the finance assistant who manually reconciles bank transactions to find out why automation never quite works for that one account.
- We’re mapping current processes in detail – income flows, cost processes, approval workflows, where manual intervention happens, where delays occur, where errors creep in.
- We’re extracting real transaction volumes from the existing system. How many purchase invoices per month? How many sales invoices? What’s the VAT structure? How many bank transactions? These numbers aren’t trivial. If you’re processing 500 invoices monthly with complex approval workflows, that fundamentally changes what solution makes sense.
- We’re identifying the sector-specific requirements that standard software won’t handle – continuous supply VAT rules, retention management, and time tracking against multiple cost centres.
- We review your current reporting. What gets produced? How long does it take? What format does the board need? What would operations genuinely find useful rather than what they say they want?
This work takes time. Most firms don’t offer it because it’s expensive to deliver and doesn’t guarantee a sale. It’s easier to sell a standard package, start implementation, and adjust as you go.
Easier for them. Expensive for you!
Discovery workshop deliverables and outcomes
Discovery reviews give you something invaluable: certainty. You know the cost before you commit. You’re not hoping the system will work; you know it will because we designed it specifically for your business.
Our reports are typically delivered within two weeks of the on-site workshops, and include the following:
1. A detailed report and gap analysis that documents your current state.
- Where processes are working.
- Where they’re broken.
- What’s creating inefficiency?
- What’s causing frustration?
2. Specific system recommendations with a clear rationale, including visual demonstrations of what your reporting would look like, and wireframes of dashboards showing the KPIs you need.
3. You’ll understand what’s involved in getting from where you are to where you need to be. Which systems, integrations, what configuration, what training, and what the timeline looks like for delivering it.
4. And critically, you should receive a fixed-price quote. No uncertainty or scope creep.
We have a review call with you to discuss findings, incorporate feedback, and prioritise recommendations. A final report follows, giving you everything needed to make an informed decision.
Questions to ask before buying finance software
Before you commit to any finance system implementation, you need answers to questions like these:
1. What exactly is causing your reporting delays?
Is it data quality? Manual consolidation? Lack of integration? Unclear chart of accounts structure? You can’t fix a problem you haven’t diagnosed.
2. Where are transactions getting stuck?
Every business has bottlenecks. Invoice approvals waiting in someone’s inbox, or manual data entry creating delays. Map them now or replicate them in your new system.
3. What do your people need from reporting?
Not what the board says they want. What would genuinely help the operations manager make better decisions? What would stop the project lead constantly asking finance for margin updates?
4. How many transactions are you processing?
Rough estimates aren’t good enough; you need actual volumes. Purchase invoices. Sales invoices. Bank transactions. Payroll records. These numbers determine whether a system can handle your workload.
5. What are the quirks of your business?
Every sector has them. Property companies dealing with continuous supply VAT. Construction firms managing retention and applications. Professional services tracking time against multiple cost centres. These aren’t unusual cases; they’re your core business, and your system needs to handle them.
6. Do your current integrations work?
You might have five different software applications that are technically integrated but practically dysfunctional. Data flows one way but not the other. Updates aren’t real-time. Errors get lost in the gaps. Map the whole ecosystem before you change anything.
Answer these questions properly, and implementation becomes straightforward. Skip them, and you’re building on guesswork.
What your business looks like after proper discovery
The transformation starts before implementation even begins.
You walk into the board meeting with a clear proposal instead of a hopeful estimate. The system design matches how your business actually operates, not how a software salesperson assumed it would. The costs are fixed, and you have a realistic timeline for the project.
Your finance team stops dreading the change. They have seen the wireframe demonstrations, and they understand why the new workflows exist and how they will make daily tasks easier. The resistance that kills most implementations simply does not materialise.
When go-live arrives, what was once buried in spreadsheets now appears on a dashboard, and you have answers in real time instead of next month.
One client told us they finally stopped second-guessing their numbers. Another said the board started making decisions in meetings rather than asking for more analysis. The visibility changes how the whole business operates, not just the finance function.
That confidence does not come from buying better software. It comes from understanding what you needed before you bought anything.
Why finance systems need proper discovery
Finance systems aren’t just about efficiency. They’re about giving you the visibility you need to make empowered decisions about your business.
When reporting is slow or data is held in multiple spreadsheets, decisions are made on incomplete information, and patterns go unnoticed.
Your business might be leaking margin on certain clients without realising it, and projects that look profitable might be anything but.
These problems don’t announce themselves. They hide in the gaps between spreadsheets.
A properly implemented financial system should highlight them, provide real-time visibility into your profitability, and flag anomalies before they become crises.
But only if the system is designed around your business model, processes, and information needs.
That requires discovery.
Common questions about finance system discovery
How do we know whether we need a discovery workshop or can go straight to implementation?
If your business has any complexity at all, you need discovery, because standard implementations will run into problems. For example, multiple entities, sector-specific requirements, high transaction volumes, and complex reporting needs.
What if we’ve already chosen the system we want?
A discovery stage is still valuable because it helps you understand how your new system should be configured, which additional tools are required, and whether it can deliver what you need. It’s better to find out now than after you’ve signed the contract.
Can’t we just do this internally?
You can try. But internal teams often lack the objectivity to see problems clearly and the experience to know what modern systems can deliver. You’ve normalised inefficiencies that an external perspective would immediately flag.
What happens if the discovery workshop reveals our plan won’t work?
Then you’ve dodged a costly mistake! Our review might recommend a different system, a phased approach, or additional tools you hadn’t considered. That’s the point. Find the right answer before you spend serious money.
Is this just consultancy that leads nowhere?
Not when it’s done properly. Our discovery workshops deliver a concrete implementation plan with fixed costs. You decide whether to proceed, but you do so with full information rather than hope.
Start with the problem, not the solution
The next time someone suggests upgrading your finance systems, resist the urge to look at software demos first.
Start with understanding what’s broken, why it’s broken, and what good looks like for your specific business.
Get those answers documented and build a solution around them. Then, and only then, start comparing systems.
Finance systems are expensive to get wrong and transformative when you get them right.
Discovery separates guesswork from strategy.
If your current systems are slowing you down and you want to understand what’s really broken before spending on a fix, contact us and let’s have a chat about what a discovery workshop could look like for your business.
You can read more here about our system implementation.