CPA · Former public company Controller · Founder, Rapid Cloud Partners
Gayle Nelson
I was the Controller before I was the consultant.
I write about ERP architecture, finance systems, and why implementations fail — from the perspective of someone who has had to close the books on the systems I now design.
I led the NetSuite implementation at Fleetmatics as we prepared to go public, helped lead an SAP S/4HANA rollout at Verizon after the acquisition, and in 2019 started Rapid Cloud Partners because I was tired of watching companies pay premium rates for consultants who had never done the job.
CPA · M.S. Taxation, Suffolk University · Former adjunct professor of accounting · Read the full bio →
Writing
All essays →- 01 · 8 min readYou Don't Get a Mulligan: How to Choose the Firm That Will Implement Your ERP
Companies spend months evaluating ERP software and a few weeks evaluating the firm that will implement it. That is backwards.
- 02 · 8 min readAutomating Crap Is Still Crap: What a CFO Should Actually Do About AI
Boards are demanding an AI strategy. Finance teams are buying tools that sit unused. The sequence that works is unglamorous and it is not optional.
- 03 · 7 min readThe Devil Is in the Data: Why Integrations Fail Before They Are Built
Integrations don't break on the software. They break on master data and on the order you load it in.
- 04 · 8 min readDesign Backwards From the General Ledger
Decide what has to hit the GL, when, and at what level of detail. Then architect every upstream system to deliver exactly that.
- 05 · 8 min readThe Operator Test: Your Consultant Should Have Done Your Job
Platform expertise is table stakes. The question is whether the person designing your revenue recognition has ever survived a month-end close.
- 06 · 7 min readWanting a New System and Being Ready for One Are Different Things
Three signals tell me whether a company will actually finish an ERP implementation. Missing one is the reason most projects stall, not the software.
- 07 · 8 min readEveryone Has Admin Access: How Companies Quietly Break the System They Just Bought
Most ERP damage happens after go-live, from the inside — over-provisioned access and ungoverned configuration changes. The fix is a permissions model and a change process.
- 08 · 8 min readScale Without the Swivel Chair: The Case Against One Platform to Rule Them All
Best-of-breed beat the all-in-one platform. But the win only holds if you enforce one rule: enter data once, then let it flow downstream.
What I write about
Financial systems architecture
How the general ledger, the chart of accounts, and the consolidation structure quietly determine what your ERP can and cannot tell you.
Process and data before platform
Why automation applied to an undocumented process produces a faster mess — and what the right sequence actually looks like.
Buying and running a transformation
Choosing an implementer, reading a quote honestly, phasing scope, and knowing whether you are ready to start at all.
Systems after go-live
Access models, change control, and the slow internal degradation that turns a good implementation into a bad system.