The situation
A $12M IT services company was running NetSuite as its accounting system, spending close to $70,000 a year on the accounting tool alone.
The business itself wasn't complicated. It transacted with a limited set of customers, and the transaction profile was straightforward. The system had been sized for a company this one wasn't.
What we changed
We moved the accounting to Zoho, at a cost of roughly $2,000, and assigned two people to handle accounting and consolidations under a finance leader.
- Rebuilt the accounting on a system proportionate to the actual transaction volume
- Kept consolidation handled properly rather than losing it in the downgrade
- Staffed the function deliberately — two people plus finance leadership, not an open-ended team
The result
Taken together — people, the finance leader, technology and the outsourced team — the total cost of the finance function fell from 1.3% of revenue to 0.3% of revenue.
The point isn't that NetSuite is bad, or that cheaper software is better. It's that the stack should be sized to the business you actually are. Getting that judgement right changed the entire cost base of the function, not just a licence line.