Vendor-neutral finance advisory
Finance System Selection Independent. No agenda.
Choosing a finance platform is one of the few technology decisions a board makes that shows up directly in the audit file. Get it right and month-end shortens, consolidation stops being a manual exercise, and the finance team spends its time on analysis rather than reconciliation. Get it wrong and you carry the cost for a decade.
Intology runs independent finance system selection for UK organisations. We take no commissions, no kickbacks and no referral fees from software vendors or implementation partners, and we do not bid to deliver what we have recommended. That structural separation is the whole point. The advice you get is the advice we would give if the outcome cost us nothing, because it does.
When finance system selection is the right question
Most finance system decisions arrive attached to a trigger. The common ones:
- The current platform has outgrown the business, or the business has outgrown the platform
- A private equity investor wants reporting the current system cannot produce
- An acquisition has left the group running two or more incompatible finance stacks
- The incumbent vendor has announced end of support, or is pushing a costly forced migration
- Month-end close has stretched to the point where it is a governance issue rather than an inconvenience
- The finance team is carrying headcount that exists only to work around the system
If you recognise two or more of those, the question is usually not whether to change platform, but how to choose without being sold to.
What independence actually buys you
The finance systems market is designed to be difficult to evaluate. Vendors price opaquely, bundle modules you will not use, and route buyers through implementation partners who earn on the deal. Most advice available to a CFO comes from someone with a financial interest in the answer.
Intology has no such interest. We hold no vendor partnerships, no reseller agreements and no implementation revenue in this market. In practice that changes three things:
The shortlist is genuinely yours.
We build it from your requirements, not from a partner list. If the right answer is that your existing platform is fine and the problem is process, we will tell you that, and it has happened.
Pricing gets tested.
We know what these platforms actually sell for, and we will tell you when a quote is above market or when a discount is being funded by a module you do not need.
The business case survives contact with the board.
Every recommendation is costed over the full term, including implementation, data migration, integration and the internal effort your team will absorb. Boards reject business cases that ignore the last one.
How we run a selection
A typical selection runs six to ten weeks depending on complexity and the number of entities in scope.
Phase 1
Current state and requirements
We map what the finance function actually does, not what the process documentation says it does. That means sitting with the people running the close, the AP function and the reporting cycle. The output is a requirements set weighted by materiality, so that the evaluation is not distorted by a long tail of features nobody uses.
Phase 2
Market analysis and longlist
We assess the market against your requirements, entity structure, sector and growth plans. The longlist is built on fit, not familiarity. Where a platform is a poor fit, we say why, and that reasoning goes in the pack.
Phase 3
RFP and structured evaluation
We write the RFP, run the process, and score responses against a weighted matrix agreed with you before any vendor sees it. Agreeing the scoring in advance is what stops the process being reverse-engineered towards a preferred answer.
Phase 4
Demonstrations and reference calls
Vendor demonstrations are run to your scripts using your scenarios, not the vendor's showcase data. We sit in, we ask the awkward questions, and we run reference calls with organisations of comparable size and structure.
Phase 5
Business case and recommendation
You receive a board-ready recommendation with full-term costs, a risk assessment, an implementation approach and a clear statement of what we would do and why. Where the decision is genuinely close, we say so rather than manufacturing false certainty.
Phase 6
Contract and mobilisation support
We support commercial negotiation and help you structure the implementation so that the assumptions in the business case are contractually protected. Selection without implementation governance is where most of the value leaks away.
Where this differs from ERP selection
Not every finance system decision is an ERP decision, and treating it as one is a common and expensive error.
If your requirement is centred on the general ledger, consolidation, AP automation and management reporting, you are running a finance system selection. The market, the price points and the implementation risk are all different from a full ERP programme.
If the requirement spans manufacturing, supply chain, field service or a wider operational footprint, you are running an ERP selection, and that is a different engagement. Intology runs those too, and you can read about our approach to independent ERP selection or our wider ERP implementation consultancy.
Part of our first conversation is establishing which of the two you actually need. Being told you need less than you thought is not a sales technique we have any reason to avoid.
The Embedded Change Model™
Selection advice that arrives as a deck and leaves has a poor record. Our Embedded Change Model™ puts senior practitioners inside your team for the duration, pairing with client-side counterparts from day one so the knowledge stays with you when we step away.
For a finance system selection, that means your finance team is in the evaluation rather than being presented with its conclusions. They own the requirements, they sit in the demonstrations, and they carry the decision into implementation with genuine conviction rather than compliance. Adoption is decided long before go-live.
Who we work with
Intology works with FTSE-listed companies, PE-backed businesses, mid-market organisations and UK public sector bodies. Typical engagement scale is £25m to £2bn revenue or equivalent public sector budget.
Over fifteen years we have delivered more than one hundred programmes for over fifty clients. Engagements are staffed with senior practitioners only. There is no pyramid, and no juniors learning on your time. The people in your steering committee are the people doing the work.
Where a finance platform decision sits inside a wider agenda, it rarely travels alone. Selections frequently run alongside value creation consulting for PE-backed portfolios, M&A advisory and post-merger integration where a group is consolidating finance stacks after a deal, or programme assurance once a platform has been chosen and the implementation needs independent oversight.
What you receive
- A weighted, materiality-tested requirements set owned by your finance team
- A documented market analysis with reasoning for every inclusion and exclusion
- A complete RFP pack and a scoring matrix agreed before vendor contact
- Structured demonstration scripts based on your scenarios
- Reference call findings from comparable organisations
- A full-term cost model covering licence, implementation, migration, integration and internal effort
- A board-ready recommendation with risk assessment and implementation approach
- Commercial negotiation support through to contract
Frequently asked questions
The questions UK CFOs most often ask before commissioning an independent finance system selection.
Do you take any payment from software vendors?+
How long does a finance system selection take?+
Can you help if we have already shortlisted?+
What if the answer is that we should keep our current system?+
Do you support the implementation afterwards?+
What does it cost?+
Evaluating a finance platform?
Tell us what is driving the decision and we will tell you honestly whether you need a selection, a process fix, or something else entirely. The initial conversation is free and carries no obligation.