Free audit for founders of £10M–£50M businesses
Is Your Finance Function AI Ready?
Answer 10 self paced questions to see how much you could save with an AI-enabled finance function.
- Score your finance engine out of 10 before anyone sells you software
- Written by a finance director who spent 20+ years inside Gilead, Siemens, Credit Suisse and Johnson & Johnson
- Tells you which fixes come first, and which ones cost nothing
- Best done with your finance lead in the room. Some answers will surprise you both
Send me the audit
Free PDF. Straight to your inbox.
Delivered straight to your inbox.
20+ years inside the finance functions of
Why this audit exists
AI multiplies whatever it lands on.
Every software vendor in your inbox is promising an AI-powered finance function. Some of that promise is real.
What the pitches leave out is simpler. Give AI a structured finance engine and you get speed. Give it a mess and you get the same mess at machine pace, delivered with more confidence and checked by fewer people.
You cannot digitise a mess. Process before platform, always.
The pattern is consistent. The businesses that win with new tools fixed the process first. The ones that regret the spend bought the platform and hoped it would tidy up after them. It never does.
This audit tells you which side of that line your business is on today.
What's inside
This Audit Tells You 3 Things
Can the engine be handed over?
Whether your close, your reporting and your forecast exist anywhere other than one person's head. Any tool you buy has to learn your process. If the process is undocumented, there is nothing to hand over, to a new hire or to software.
Does the data move by itself?
Re-keying, duplicate supplier records, invoices sitting in inboxes, reconciliations done by hand. This is where hours vanish and errors breed. It is also usually the cheapest thing on the list to fix.
Would the controls hold under pressure?
AI has cut the cost of convincing fraud: cloned invoices, cloned voices, urgent requests that sound exactly like you. And whatever you automate, judgement stays human. A team that rubber-stamps reports today will rubber-stamp machine reports tomorrow, faster.
And then your score, with what to do about it
Count your yeses. The audit reads back three bands, and each one gives you a different next move. 0–3: not ready, and better to know now, with the three questions to start on. 4–7: where most founder-led £10M–£50M businesses land, and your noes are usually one problem wearing three costumes. 8–10: ready, and the risk flips to buying software for problems you no longer have.
Before you download it
Who this is for
Worth ten minutes if
- You run a founder-led business turning over £10M to £50M
- Someone is selling you AI or an ERP project and you have no way to judge it
- Month-end has overrun again and nobody can quite say why
- You are about to sign off a senior finance hire
- Your team is still re-typing the same numbers into two places
Skip it if
- You want bookkeeping, audit, statutory accounts or tax. I do none of those
- You want a software recommendation. This audit deliberately names no vendors
- You are looking for fundraising or deal execution support
- Your finance function is under £10M of revenue and one person handles everything. You will score low, and that is normal
About me
Suraj N. Fernando, FCA
For twenty years I was the person large companies called when the numbers stopped making sense. Johnson & Johnson. Siemens. Credit Suisse. Gilead. Budgets from £10M to £200M+, across five regions.
I now point all of it at a much smaller kind of business, on purpose. Founder-led companies between £10M and £50M: too big for a bookkeeper, not ready for a full-time CFO, profit climbing, cash tight, and a forecast that is a guess with a spreadsheet around it.
The reasoning is simple. The scale changes. What is broken usually does not.
What people say
Testimonials
"Suraj consistently demonstrated a deep commitment to understanding the nuances of the partner function, never settling for surface-level support. He proactively sought opportunities to streamline processes, drive efficiencies, and elevate the strategic value of finance in my decision making. His ability to balance technical expertise with a collaborative mindset made him a true partner."
"Suraj is a natural influencer; he was able to quickly gain the trust and respect of my management team and the individuals impacted by this migration. Suraj ensured a personal touch in this delicately balanced project, resulting in a very successful outcome."
Questions people ask first
Is this a sales pitch in a PDF?
No. It is ten questions, an explanation of why each one matters, and three score bands with what to do about each. The last page tells you where to find me if you want to talk. Nothing before it does.
Will someone call me?
No. You get the audit by email. If you want a conversation you book it yourself, and you can ignore that option entirely.
Do I need my finance lead to do this?
You can do it alone in ten minutes. It works better with your finance lead in the room, because a few of these answers tend to differ depending on who you ask. That difference is usually the most useful thing you learn.
Does it recommend software?
It names no vendors and recommends no tools. The whole point is to tell you whether your engine is ready for any of them yet.
What happens if I score badly?
Most founder-led businesses of this size land between four and seven. A low score is not a verdict on your business, it is a list of things that are cheaper to fix now than after you have automated them.
No fluff. Just clarity.
Ten questions. Ten minutes. One honest answer.
You will know exactly where your finance engine would help an AI investment, and where it would quietly sabotage one.
Delivered straight to your inbox.
The AI-Ready Finance Function Audit
Tell me where to send it.