This fast-growing startup was scaling quickly with new customers, new hires, and fresh funding, but their finance systems did not scale at the same rate. They were facing messy financial records from funding rounds, platform revenues, and payroll growth that left the books fragmented and incomplete. Manual reporting bottlenecks meant MIS reports were built in spreadsheets, taking days to prepare and prone to errors. Over-reliance on people meant key tasks lived in the heads of individual team members – if someone left or got sick, the process stopped. Leadership lacked instant access to KPIs, runway, or departmental spending.