Integrated five acquisitions into financial planning and scenario modeling in seven months
Supported revenue growth from ~£40 million to ~£150 million
Expanded from one-year spreadsheet-based budgeting to integrated five-year planning
The Challenge: Building a Finance Operation Ready for Rapid Growth
HF is a UK and Irish legal firm that primarily represents insurance companies across claims ranging from motor and aviation to disease, sport and other specialist areas. When Andy Young joined as CFO just over five years ago, the firm was generating just under £40 million in revenue. By the end of 2026, HF expects to be running at approximately £150 million.
That growth has brought significant organizational change. HF converted from a partnership into a separate legal entity, introduced an all-employee share scheme and sold a 30% stake to private equity. Today, the firm is using that investment to support its next stage of growth through acquisitions and the expansion of customer contracts.
Finance needed to be ready for that journey.
When Andy arrived, HF’s existing finance systems were not designed for the scale the company was targeting. Its general ledger could not support multiple currencies, while planning, forecasting and budgeting relied on spreadsheets and focused on a single year.
Andy wanted HF to plan further ahead, work with greater detail, and improve the speed and accuracy of budgeting. He also wanted departments to participate more directly in planning rather than treating it as a finance-only exercise.
Growth through acquisition added another requirement. HF needed to incorporate acquired businesses into its financial plans quickly without rebuilding complex spreadsheets every time the organization changed.
“We needed to go for a longer time horizon, we needed better detail, we needed to be faster in what we budget and more accurate,” Andy said. “When we’re looking at acquisitions, we needed to be able to bolt them in and deal with them quickly rather than having to rebuild all the spreadsheets from scratch.”
HF evaluated several planning systems before selecting Vena. The ability to bring planning, forecasting, budgeting, reporting and account reconciliation together was particularly compelling. Instead of investing in separate systems for planning and reconciliation, HF could support both within Vena.
The Solution: Creating a Flexible Finance Foundation That Grows With HF
HF moved quickly, going live with Vena approximately three months after purchasing the platform so the finance team could use it for that year's planning cycle.
Since then, HF has expanded its use of Vena across five-year planning, monthly actuals reporting, budgeting, scenario modeling and account reconciliation. The team also brings employee and salary data into Vena alongside expected revenue at the individual level, allowing those assumptions to roll up into departmental and company-wide plans.
That flexibility has become particularly valuable as HF accelerates its acquisition strategy.
Through the end of July 2026, HF had completed five acquisitions. Finance used Vena to maintain its original budget while creating successive scenarios incorporating each acquisition. When the timing of one acquisition changed, the team could adjust which acquisitions were included without rebuilding its planning environment.
For Andy, that adaptability represents a significant departure from HF’s previous spreadsheet-based approach.
“We’ve built it so you can take acquisitions in or out,” Andy explained. “If we’d built it in what we had previously, spreadsheets, we wouldn’t have been able to cope with that.”
Reporting has also evolved alongside planning. HF now produces standardized reporting for internal teams, private equity investors, banks, department heads and divisional leaders from the same underlying reporting environment. Different audiences receive the information relevant to them while finance maintains consistency across the business.
That consistency has also strengthened confidence in the numbers. Because HF’s reporting is connected to its general ledger, Finance can maintain alignment between management reporting and the underlying trial balance rather than relying on offline adjustments that can break the audit trail.
The result, Andy said, is effectively one version of the truth. Finance can get to answers faster while knowing reported results remain connected to the underlying financial data.
HF has extended that focus on trust into account reconciliation. Vena Professional Services initially created several reconciliation templates for the company. HF’s internal team later adapted those templates and built out the process themselves. The reconciliation process is helping Finance identify accounts that are not reconciling properly, giving the team visibility into issues it previously may not have known existed.
Just as importantly, the finance team can manage much of that work itself. Andy sees Vena’s accessibility as an advantage because HF does not need highly technical resources or extensive external consulting every time the business needs to adapt its processes.
As HF continues to grow, the company is already considering the next evolution of its finance environment. The team is exploring greater use of Power BI for visualization and drill-down reporting, along with Vena’s expanding API capabilities to automate more of the steps connecting its financial systems. The goal is to keep making Finance faster while preserving the flexibility that has helped HF navigate rapid change.
For a company that has transformed significantly in five years and continues to pursue growth through acquisitions, that ability to evolve is central to the value HF sees in Vena.
“As you grow, a lot of things change, and you want something that’s capable of changing and growing with you. What you want is a platform that you can pivot on a lot easier, and Vena is one of those that offers that capability.”