Finance Teams Are Bleeding Time and Budget in Business Central – Here’s How to Stop It
For today’s CFOs, the true value of Business Central (BC) depends more than ever on how it’s managed. Without proper alignment and governance, critical time, budget, and trust can quietly slip away, limiting the impact BC was designed to deliver.
The promise was clear when you adopted the technology: fewer manual tasks, faster closings, cleaner reporting, stronger compliance, and so on.
But months later, you notice something troubling:
- Reports still arrive late
- Forecasts swing wildly from reality
- Your finance teams spend nights patching spreadsheets instead of analyzing outcomes
The “automation” you were sold seems to require endless workarounds.
If this feels familiar, you’re not alone. Deloitte notes that nearly 7 in 10 executives believe their ERP systems fail to support high-quality decision-making. What should have been your team’s performance engine becomes a silent budget bleed.
Why CFOs should care: These inefficiencies impact core metrics, including cash flow visibility, compliance accuracy, forecasting precision, and cost control. If unchecked, they frustrate teams, erode stakeholder trust, and block strategic growth altogether.
Uncovering the Hidden Leakages in Business Central
Process Misalignment
Business Central is flexible, but flexibility without structure often breeds inefficiency. When finance processes aren’t aligned with operations, you see duplicated approvals, manual reconciliations, and inconsistent workflows.
Manual Workarounds
Even with BC’s unified data model, many finance teams default to Excel workarounds, siloed data entry, and manual reconciliations. Usually, this is due to necessity, as the system wasn’t configured to support real-time visibility or cross-departmental workflows. Soon, your ERP is less a “single source of truth” and more a web of disconnected patches.
Underutilized Native Features
Business Central has become significantly more robust, with the 2024 Release Wave 2 introducing over 70 new financial analytics and reporting templates, enhanced Power BI integration, and Copilot-driven natural-language insights. Yet, underused—even unknown—features mean finance teams seldom leverage self-service reporting or automated approvals.
Implementation Gaps and Budget Overruns
ERP implementations often go astray without a clear roadmap or governance structure. ERP market statistics from Oracle indicate that only about half of projects are completed on schedule: 31% overran slightly, while 12% ran significantly late. Scope creep and technical issues are frequent culprits that drive hidden costs.
Lack of Concurrent Visibility
When departments work in isolation, such as sales, operations, and finance, many ERP functions fall short, failing to provide unified data or real-time insights. This fragmentation delays decisions and increases errors.
Inefficiencies Cost Real Money
When reconciliations take weeks and data sits in silos, compliance risk spikes. Hidden inefficiencies, whether due to outdated systems, manual tasks, or inefficient workflows, have measurable impacts on profitability, productivity, and employee morale.
Why Traditional Fixes Fail
Most CFOs react in one of two ways:
- Hire more staff.
More controllers, more analysts, more time. But adding people to broken processes multiplies inefficiency.
- Throw tech at the problem.
Buy another BI tool. Layer on automation. Swap modules. Without process alignment, new tech adds complexity.
The truth: you don’t have a technology problem. You have a methodology problem.
A Path Forward? DCG Has a Battle-tested Solution
SPEAR is DCG’s proven, structured framework that restores control, clarity, and ROI to finance functions embedded in Business Central. It’s a multi-phase transformation model that combines structured business analysis, stakeholder alignment, and agile execution, with AI-powered acceleration built in. Leadership stays in control. No rip-and-replace; no disruption!
The SPEAR Model in Brief
Surveillance: “Do you know how fast you’re going?”
Gain real-time visibility into data flows, processes, and cultural readiness. Establish trust in your data foundation.
Excellence: “Can you sustain or speed up with confidence?”
Standardize procedures, define ownership, and start treating processes like repeatable products, not one-off scripts.
AI/Automation: “What can and should you automate?”
Only automate once you can measure performance and manage the rules. This ensures sustainable automation, not brittle shortcuts.
Requirements & Roadmap: Define the “how and when.”
What gaps exist? What do we build or buy, and when? What’s the sequencing, timing, budget, and risk profile? How do we test and iterate rapidly?
L1-L5 + SPEED: Powering Alignment and Agility
- L1–L5 ensures that strategy, capabilities, software selection, custom features, and engineering readiness are fully aligned and visible to all involved.
- SPEED (Strategy, Posture, Education, Enthusiasm, Deployment) ensures the organization stays engaged, educated, aligned, and ready for change.
A Practical Case in Point: Achieving Financial Accuracy
with ERP & CRM
Liquid Environmental Solutions (LES), a national leader in non-hazardous liquid waste, was struggling with fragmented systems, slow closes, and poor visibility across finance and operations.
Using SPEAR, DCG helped LES:
Surveillance – Identify blind spots in financial reporting and service operations.
Performance – Establish reliable KPIs for accuracy and efficiency.
Excellence – Standardize workflows across finance and customer service.
Automation – Streamline reporting and call center integration.
Requirements & Roadmap – Sequence ERP, CRM, and call center modernization in phases.
The result: Faster, more accurate closes, unified reporting dashboards, and scalable infrastructure—giving leadership the clarity and control to support national growth.
See how they stopped the budget bleed and refocused on strategy.
Why This Approach Builds Trust Over “Another Consulting Fix”
1. CFO-Led Co-creating, not being sold to
SPEAR ensures executives remain in control. Decisions, priorities, and costs are always transparent.
2. Quick wins that fund transformation
Dashboards, reconciliations, and close processes improve in weeks, not years, building momentum and credibility with boards.
3. AI-powered acceleration
SPEAR leverages AI to speed data mapping, reporting automation, and UAT cycles, cutting months of wasted time.
4. Governance without bureaucracy
The L1–L5 framework (Strategy to Sprint) aligns business and IT, avoiding scope creep and “mystery deliverables.”
5. Risk mitigation
By design, SPEAR reduces compliance and budget risk by surfacing decisions early, before they spiral downstream.’
Let’s chat! No pressure, just practical answers!
From Budget and Time Bleeding to Leading
Most CFOs need to realize that a well-governed ERP isn’t just about efficiency. It becomes the foundation for faster closes, live visibility, and audit readiness. In fact, leading finance teams now treat their ERP systems like products, continuously tuning, measuring, and improving them. That mindset shift, supported by a framework like SPEAR, is what turns BC from a system you work around into one you can truly build strategy and rely on.
