Finance Transformation
Why Finance Functions Fail at Scale
1 January 2025
A finance function that works well at ten million in revenue will often start breaking down at thirty million. Not because the people get worse. Because the processes that were good enough at one scale become the bottleneck at the next.
This is one of the most predictable problems in growing businesses, and one of the least anticipated. The founder or MD notices that month-end is taking longer. That the numbers are less reliable. That the finance team seems to be working harder but delivering less. The usual response is to hire another person. It rarely fixes it. Knowing when to hire your first Finance Director matters, but hiring alone does not solve structural problems.
The problem is structural, not headcount.
What actually breaks
At small scale, finance functions run on individual expertise and informal communication. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing. The person doing the bank reconciliation is the same person chasing the invoice and answering the auditor’s question. It works because the volume is low and the context is shared.
As the business grows, volume increases and context fragments. The informal systems that worked at ten people do not work at thirty. The workarounds that were temporary become permanent. The spreadsheet that one person built and understands becomes the spreadsheet that nobody fully understands but everyone depends on.
Processes that were never designed get inherited by people who did not design them. Nobody knows why certain steps exist. Nobody knows what breaks if they are skipped. They find out at year-end.
The three breakpoints
There are three moments where finance functions typically start to fail under growth.
The first is when transaction volume outpaces manual processing capacity. Reconciliations fall behind. Invoice processing slows. The team is doing the same work but there is simply more of it and the same hours will not stretch.
The second is when reporting requirements increase faster than reporting capability. The board or investors want more detail, faster, in a different format. The finance team is producing what it has always produced and cannot easily produce what is now being asked for. This is what a Finance Director should be doing: bridging the gap between operational output and strategic demand.
The third is when the business adds complexity: new entities, new currencies, new markets, new product lines. The existing system was not built for it and cannot accommodate it without manual workarounds that multiply error risk.
What to do about it
The answer is never just more people. If you are building the finance function from the ground up, you have the chance to get this right. Before headcount, you need process clarity. Before process clarity, you need an honest diagnosis of where the function is actually failing and why.
That means mapping what exists, not what should exist. It means finding the manual steps, the workarounds, the spreadsheets that have become load-bearing walls. It means understanding what the function needs to deliver at the next stage of the business, not just at the current one.
Then you redesign. You automate what should be automated. You document what needs to be documented. You build controls that hold without manual supervision.
Then, if you still need more people, you hire them into a function that can use them properly.
Maebh Collins is a Chartered Accountant (FCA, ICAEW) and finance transformation specialist with Big 4 training and twenty years of operational experience as a founder and senior finance leader.
Maebh Collins is a Chartered Accountant (FCA, ICAEW), Big 4 trained, with twenty years of experience building and running international businesses. She specialises in finance transformation, ecommerce operations, and digital strategy.