25/08/2026
What happens when a process no one designed keeps running for years anyway?
We recently worked with a 250-person finance function and found hours a week going into bulk updates, reconciliations, reporting, and follow-ups.
The cause wasn't inefficiency.
It was that the process had outgrown its original design,
several handoffs and workarounds ago.
One example: AR follow-up emails, consuming roughly 12 hours a week.
After redesigning the workflow, the same output took 20 minutes, using tools the team already had: Excel, VBA, centralised dashboards. No new systems, no added headcount.
This is a pattern we observe consistently across finance functions. We refer to it as process debt - workflows that were never designed, only inherited, accumulating one workaround at a time.
It rarely appears on a P&L. It tends to surface as headcount requests or capacity constraints attributed to volume rather than process.
The more significant outcome wasn't the time saved. It was the capacity created for judgment, for exceptions, for the analytical work a finance function is intended to perform.
Before adding headcount, it's worth establishing what's already consuming the hours available.
