What international growth does to the finance function, and what we learned moving Readpeak onto NetSuite ERP.
Every advisor to a fast-growing company eventually sees the same pattern. The accounting software is not necessarily broken – it is simply no longer keeping up with the structure of the business.
Month-end close starts taking longer. Group reporting depends increasingly on Excel. Currency translation and intercompany reconciliations are handled manually. And when the company opens another entity abroad, the finance team adds yet another local accounting system.
By the time management asks whether it is time to move to an enterprise resource planning system (ERP), the organisation may already have outgrown its existing setup.
The signals are about complexity, not size
Revenue and headcount are not always good indicators of when a company needs an ERP. Complexity matters more.
Typical warning signs include: several legal entities, multiple currencies, manual consolidation, different charts of accounts, complex revenue recognition, and management reporting that requires data to be exported from several systems.
A simple, useful test: if management cannot see the group’s financial position until someone has exported and reconciled data from multiple accounting systems, the company may already have an ERP problem.
International expansion makes addressing the issue even more important. Each subsidiary still has its own local accounting, tax and statutory requirements, while management and investors expect one reliable view of the whole group.
Why NetSuite enters the conversation
This is where an ERP such as Oracle NetSuite can become relevant. NetSuite is particularly well suited to companies whose complexity comes from international and multi-entity growth. Subsidiaries can operate within a common ERP structure while maintaining their own legal entities, currencies, and local processes.
The benefits for the finance team are practical: a common chart of accounts, consolidated reporting, multi-currency accounting, intercompany processes, approval workflows, and a consistent audit trail across the group.
From eight systems to one finance platform
We saw this clearly with Readpeak, a Finnish ad-tech company operating internationally. As the group expanded, different subsidiaries ended up using different local accounting systems. At one stage, the finance organisation was working across eight accounting environments. Even approving invoices meant moving between systems, while group reporting required data to be collected and consolidated separately.
Valjas implemented Oracle NetSuite as Readpeak’s common ERP platform. The objective was not simply to replace accounting software. It was to create one finance architecture for the whole group, with common structures, processes and financial data.
The project also reinforced an important lesson: the software is only one part of an ERP implementation. Chart of accounts design, subsidiary structure, intercompany flows, reporting, tax processes, and integrations all need to work together.
An international ERP does not remove the need for local accounting and tax expertise; instead, it creates a common platform where that local expertise can operate.
For XLNC members advising internationally expanding companies, this creates a natural opportunity for cooperation. The ERP and group finance architecture can be global, while accounting and tax expertise remains local.