Growing Fast? Outgrowing Your Business Systems
Helena Rothwell • September 3, 2025
How SMEs can manage growth with the right systems, project management, and funding
Growth is positive — but it brings pressure.
What once worked on spreadsheets or a patchwork of tools starts to creak. Teams spend more time reconciling numbers than serving customers. Decisions slow because the data does not line up.
These issues are far more common than many leaders realise. Well-run, profitable companies experience them as they scale.
Scaling Challenges
For many growing businesses, the symptoms are familiar:
- Still running critical functions from Excel or manual spreadsheets (often 'owned' by an individual - and noone else knows nonone else knows how the magic works).
- Having a finance package or ERP***, but finding it poorly implemented, not joined up, or simply not up to the job.
- Relying on standalone systems or manufacturing equipment that does not connect to your finance, sales, or logistics etc.
- Duplicating effort by entering the same data in multiple places, introducing risk of errors.
- Getting different — sometimes conflicting — financial reports depending on which department’s data you check.
- Making decisions based on last month’s reports rather than real-time information.
- No Single Source of Truth (SSOT), so the “right” number depends on who you ask or which system you run the report from.
These challenges can be frustrating, time-consuming, slow growth, create avoidable errors, and increase operational risk.
Growth Opportunities
The answer often lies in integrated processes and connected systems to restore clarity and control. With the right approach you gain visibility across functions, reduce duplicated effort, and support reliable, real-time decision-making.
Implementing better systems is not a quick fix. It takes careful planning, clear communication, and structured project management. In the long run it is worth it: fewer errors, faster cycle times, and confidence in the numbers.
Steps to Scale
So how exactly do you take stock and figure out what needs to be done?
- Discovery and alignment
Map how work actually happens today. = Current state. Capture pain points, hand-offs, data sources, and compliance needs. Agree the outcomes that matter. = Desired state. - Grants check and funding plan
Identify suitable supports (for example, Enterprise Ireland) and what they can cover — discovery, project management, integration, software, and training. Build your funding timeline into the project plan. - Requirements and RFP
Translate business needs into clear, testable requirements. = Identified Requirements. Prioritise the “must-haves” versus “nice-to-haves”. Compile a concise Request for Proposal (RFP) that vendors can respond to without guesswork. - Market scan, shortlist, and demos
Build a longlist, filter to a shortlist, and run structured demos against your use cases. Score vendors on fit, integration capability, total cost of ownership, and implementation approach. - Fit–gap and integration design
For each shortlisted option, assess process fit, data model, reporting, and APIs. Integration design -> Define how systems will talk to each other to create your (Single Source of Truth) SSOT and real-time visibility. - Business case and decision
Weigh benefits, risks, costs (licences, services, internal time), and funding. Choose the option that best meets outcomes, not just features. - Implementation plan and project management
Phase the work. Set governance, roles, milestones, budget control, and change-management actions. Plan data migration, testing, training, and go-live support. This is your project plan. - Adoption, training, and benefits tracking
Equip people to use the new processes and tools. Track adoption and benefits against the original objectives. Tweak and improve and measure results.
Enterprise Ireland and Other Grants
Grants such as those from Enterprise Ireland can support far more than software licences. They can help fund early discovery work, project management, integration, training, and the implementation itself. In many cases, the funding can also cover paying a professional to guide the process or contribute towards overall delivery costs. Surprisingly, many businesses miss out simply because they lack the time or capacity to apply — even though this support could be paid for. Building the funding pathway into your plan keeps momentum and lowers the net cost of change.
Signs You’re Outgrowing Your Systems
You know you are outgrowing your systems when:
- Operations feel a little out of control at busy times.
- Too much time is spent reconciling reports or debating which number is “right”.
- Teams re-key the same data into multiple places.
- Valuable equipment or systems sit isolated from the rest of the business.
- Decisions are made on stale information.
If this sounds familiar, the next step is a structured, funded plan — discovery first, then a well-run selection and implementation. An ERP may be part of the answer, but integration, data, and project management are what make growth sustainable. Right Hand Consulting can help you scope it, secure support, and deliver it.
*** What is an ERP?
ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. In practice it is software that connects core business functions such as finance, sales, production, logistics, and HR into a single system. Done well, it reduces data silos, prevents duplication of data, and provides a reliable, real-time view of performance. Done poorly, it becomes an expensive tool that staff avoid using.
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