The New Finance Director’s First 90 Days: Inheriting the ERP Estate and What to Check Before the First Month-End

A new Finance Director rarely inherits a neat diagram of the company’s finance systems, a current support contract and a tested recovery plan. More often, the ERP arrives with the job: it may be business-critical, poorly documented and maintained by people whose knowledge is difficult to replace.

The first 90 days are an opportunity to establish what the organisation has, what could interrupt month-end and where informed investment will reduce risk or cost. The priority is not to replace everything immediately. It is to get a reliable picture, protect the next close and create a practical plan.

This is the Fractal IT Director approach: start with business outcomes and accountability, then shape the technology decisions and execution around them. David’s practitioner-led perspective draws on IT project management and multi-national onboarding, alongside experience administering legacy business systems. Technical changes should follow a clear view of the operational and financial risks.

Days 1–30: establish control before the first close

Begin with the next month-end, not a large transformation programme. Ask Finance, Operations and IT to map the close from source transaction to signed-off reports. Include bank reconciliation, sales and purchase invoices, journals, accruals, stock valuation, VAT, payroll interfaces and management reporting.

For each process, record who owns it, which system or spreadsheet it depends on, what can go wrong and what the manual fallback is. Identify approval steps and segregation of duties. A spreadsheet that quietly bridges two systems may be a key control, or an unowned risk.

Then inventory the ERP estate:

• What product, version and hosting model are in use?
• Is the software still supported, and when do support or licence agreements renew?
• Who can administer it, and who holds supplier and escalation contacts?
• Which integrations connect it to banks, payroll, stock, ecommerce, reporting or document storage?
• What configuration, customisation, reports and known issues need documenting?

Do not treat a familiar name on a login screen as proof that the system is supported. Verify the version, contract, supplier responsibilities, update position and escalation route. A platform may still work while the knowledge and support arrangements around it are already fragile.

Make the recovery plan measurable

Disaster Recovery should be one of the first things you verify, not an assumption buried in a supplier contract. Ask for evidence of successful backup and restore tests, not just a statement that backups run.

In business language, two measures help frame the discussion:

• Recovery time objective (RTO): how long the business can tolerate a service being unavailable.
• Recovery point objective (RPO): how much recent work, measured in time, the business can afford to lose.

These targets belong to business processes, not just IT. Finance and Operations should decide how quickly invoicing, payment processing, purchasing or stock handling must resume, and how much re-keying or reconciliation they could tolerate.

For organisations using Business Central Online, Microsoft documents point-in-time environment restore capability and a 28-day restore window. Review Microsoft’s current Business Central backup and restore guidance with the relevant administrator. A documented platform feature is useful, but it does not by itself demonstrate that the business can resume work. You still need to understand the recovery of integrations, access, extensions, reporting and transactions created after the chosen recovery point.

Test the plan. Record who can authorise a restore, who performs it, how Finance checks the result and how the organisation would continue essential work while systems are unavailable. The Disaster Recovery plan should include a rehearsed recovery sequence and a clear owner for each action.

Ask the key-person question about legacy systems

An ageing ERP is not automatically an urgent replacement project. It is, however, a prompt to ask whether the system is supported and whether the business depends on one person to keep it running.

That question is especially important on legacy IBM i estates, including systems sometimes referred to as AS/400. Who understands its configuration, jobs, interfaces, backup procedures and recovery steps? Is there managed cover if that person is unavailable? Are the supplier relationships and system documentation current?

Treat specialist IBM i Management as a high-value continuity and technical consultancy requirement, not a generic helpdesk ticket. Document dependencies and access, identify gaps in cover and agree a transition plan before a key-person issue becomes an incident.

Review spend to fund the right fixes

A first-90-days spend review can reveal duplicated licences, users who no longer need access, overlapping tools and suppliers with unclear responsibilities. That is the purpose of Technology Expense Management: connect technology costs to actual business use, contract terms and the organisation’s strategy.

Build a simple register of recurring IT costs, renewal dates, business owners, users and purpose. Confirm whether services overlap and whether critical systems rely on an unrecorded contract or individual account. Then prioritise changes: removing an unused licence may be straightforward; changing a core service should follow an impact and dependency review.

The objective is not to cut spend indiscriminately. It is to find avoidable cost and redirect it towards documented support, recovery testing or essential remediation. A strategic review of Managed IT Services and Technology Expense Management can also clarify where specialist partners provide execution. Helpdesk Support, Cloud Solutions, Network Solutions and Voice and Connectivity can be valuable bolt-ons, but they should support the agreed IT strategy, not substitute for one.

Days 31–60: decide what the ERP should become

Once the current estate and month-end risks are visible, decide whether the existing ERP can be supported and improved safely, or whether it is time to consolidate. A new platform should be selected against the business’s processes, controls, reporting needs and total cost, not simply because the current system feels old.

For many UK SMEs, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a documented, supported core to assess for finance and connected operations. The important work is to define scope, data, integrations, roles, reporting and the operating model before implementation. A Dynamics 365 Jump Start should mean structured discovery and a clear route forward, not a rushed promise to switch systems without understanding the estate.

Set out the decision in business terms: which problems would consolidation solve, what needs to change, what can remain, and how will success be measured? Estimate the cost of transition alongside the cost and risk of continuing with unsupported software, duplicate processes or specialist knowledge concentrated in one person.

Build the evidence base for assurance

A Finance Director is often expected to approve controls and provide evidence, not just review budgets. Treat ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials as guided consultancy domains that help establish a credible evidence base, not labels to apply without assessment.

Start with a current asset and supplier register, access reviews, incident procedures, backup and restore evidence, risk ownership and a record of corrective actions. Cyber Essentials gives a baseline to assess areas such as user access, secure configuration, security updates, malware protection and firewalls. The National Cyber Security Centre’s overview explains the scheme.

ISO 27001 readiness requires a risk-led management system and evidence that controls are appropriate, assigned and reviewed. A badge or checklist is not a substitute for working processes. Agree what the business needs to demonstrate, who owns each control and how evidence will be maintained.

Days 61–90: turn findings into an owned plan

By day 90, the Finance Director should be able to present a concise view of the inherited estate and what happens next. Include:

1. A month-end process map, key dependencies and manual workarounds.
2. An inventory of ERP systems, versions, integrations, suppliers and owners.
3. Evidence of backup and restore tests, with agreed RTO and RPO priorities.
4. Key-person and support gaps, including a plan for specialist legacy cover.
5. A technology spend review with proposed savings and remediation priorities.
6. A recommendation on the ERP’s future, with options, costs, risks and measurable outcomes.
7. A compliance evidence plan, with named owners and review dates.

Give each action an accountable owner and deadline. Separate urgent risk reduction from longer-term modernisation, and report progress in operational terms: can the team close the books, recover service, explain the controls and account for the spend?

The first 90 days are not a race to buy new technology. They are a chance to replace uncertainty with evidence, protect the next month-end and make the case for the right investment. Strategic consultancy should lead; specialist support and managed execution should follow.

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