As a fast growing business, Bloom & Wild’s financial reporting team was on a relentless treadmill of tasks. No sooner had month-end tasks finished than the team would start working on the next.

CFO Dominique Highfield and Group Head of Financial Reporting Emma Voak decided that, instead of simply adding headcount, they would find a solution to empower their team and fuel sustainable growth.

Finding the right software

Then came a stroke of luck: Bloom & Wild was contacted by Stacks.ai, which happened to have a tool that seemed to fit the bill.

“We thought, actually, this is going to be a good thing to explore,” says Voak. “Their style of working and the size of their business meant that they were willing to support us in specific areas, not just give us an off-the-shelf product.”

The finance team at Bloom & Wild started collaborating with the provider on ideas that might solve the specific problems that the company was trying to tackle.

“In the initial stages, where a software provider is showing you the product, it can look very impressive,” says Voak. “They might say it can match 99% of transactions for you, and it can save you 80% of your month-end close time. It’s not until you get into the nitty gritty that you can see how much of these savings can actually be unlocked in your own systems.”

As a result, Highfield and Voak went into the partnership expecting it to be a learning journey. Inevitably, some features have been more powerful than others. The development process is ongoing, as they work on new features that better fit the company’s needs. “Until you start using it, it's difficult to know how exactly it will work for your team,” says Voak.

Supporting the team

Highfield, as a new CFO to Bloom & Wild, was also very conscious of the impact of bringing an AI companion in for the team. “From the start, the team knew it was about making their lives better, while scaling the business fast and not scaling the finance team linearly. This was not about replacing the team with a tool, but enhancing the team.”

Stacks also spent time with the team individually as part of the collaborative approach taken to the project.

It took a couple of months to fully embed the tool and train up the team to use it. Some elements were immediate hits among the team. Others required more development, and some developments are still ongoing. “Stacks themselves are continuously bringing out new features too, while they scale and grow. It’s useful to be with them for this part of their journey, to feed into and benefit from their developments," says Voak.

Identify and address your pain points

Every finance team has their own unique processes. What might work for one company isn't necessarily going to work for another, Voak explains. “For example, we thought the bank reconciliation tool was going to unlock lots of time for us straight away. But once we delved into it, we realised we were already using quite a sophisticated method within our existing system.” 

Highfield adds, “In the changing world of AI, the solutions for our pain points are there. For me, we’re adopting AI by having great partners to guide us through the opportunities that understand our business and our processes.”

With a relatively small team that knew the existing processes inside out, Bloom & Wild was able to get to grips with the pain points and the improvements needed, Highfield explains. Every member of the team owns tasks end-to-end, working closely together to coach one another through these new tools. “The team understands the context behind the introduction of the new tool, as well as being clear on the required output. It means we’ve had good levels of adoption and successful processes maintained throughout”.

Streamlining processes

There are also limits on what the AI can touch, Voak explains. It cannot change anything in the company’s underlying accounting systems, for example. “The ultimate goal is to make our internal processes more efficient and save our team time, so that we can spend time on the less repetitive tasks, and often on things that add value.”

The company also ensured that its auditors (S&W) were informed about the tool. “We look forward to getting their feedback for the next year's audit, as we hope that the year-end audit preparation will lean heavily on the output of our new tool,” says Highfield.

The wider team is also exploring how AI could assist them more, she adds. “Our tax manager is considering using Stacks for VAT reconciliations, meanwhile our FP&A team are evaluating a new FP&A tool to support more predictive planning and forecasting“.

Bloom & Wild will continue to explore its use of AI within the Finance Team. “As a tech-led company that is widely using AI in many aspects, our Finance team is empowered and encouraged to do the same. Highfield says. “In the short term, this will ease the pressure of our finance team during pinch points through automation. In the longer term, I hope it will enable us to scale at lower cost and it will support better informed decisions as a business.”