Table of Contents
Key takeaways
- Both Morrisons and The Economist describe their old EPM as a tool people had quietly stopped trusting, not one that had technically failed.
- "Lead by example" came up independently from both leaders - finance can't ask the business to change while clinging to spreadsheets itself.
- The biggest adoption driver wasn't the feature list - it was bringing non-finance users in early to pressure-test the system.
- Legacy platforms that charge more every time the business wants to do more quietly cap ambition.
- Both leaders wish they'd decided faster, but don't regret canvassing wide opinion first - the two aren't the same thing.
Same lesson, two different industries
At a customer panel during Pigment Catalyst London, James Fasey, Group Finance Director at Morrisons and Binal Patel, Group FP&A Director at The Economist Group, compared notes on moving off their legacy planning platforms. A UK grocery retailer and a global media group have almost nothing else in common - but their migration stories rhyme closely.
Why the old platforms actually got replaced
Ask most finance leaders why they replaced their platform and you'll get a features answer. Listen to Fasey and Patel, and a more honest one surfaces: the old tools weren't broken - they'd stopped being trusted.
- For The Economist: the previous EPM had drifted into a pure consolidation tool. Every piece of real analytical work happened outside it, in spreadsheets, because doing anything new inside the platform came with a cost, an effort tax, or a missing skill set.
- For Morrisons: despite an existing EPM investment, the team was "stepping back in time," still running heavily on Excel because the platform had never been fully adopted.
Neither platform had technically broken. Both had lost the case for daily use.
Cost discipline is a credibility issue
Both leaders raised cost unprompted - not as a line item, but as a leadership problem.
- James Fasey shared that every time the business wanted to extend the old platform, it cost more. Fasey's framing: it's hard to tell the rest of the business no on OpEx or CapEx while finance's own tool gets pricier every time it needs to do more.
- Binal Patel detailed that every new request came with cost, effort, or a missing skill set - so teams stopped asking, and the platform quietly became a reporting shell.
The lesson: if a platform's cost curve punishes ambition, it will suppress ambition long before anyone formally decides to replace it.
"Lead by example" is the mechanism, not a soft skill
Both leaders used near-identical language to describe what actually got their organizations to move.
Morrisons: bring in the people outside your reporting line
James Fasey's team spent real time getting non-finance users to pressure-test the system directly, rather than announcing the decision top-down. What came back mattered more than any feature demo: those users specifically valued doing everything inside one platform - no jumping to a spreadsheet and back.
The Economist: reframe it as a career opportunity
Binal Patel called it a "hearts and minds game." Rather than announce a tool swap, the team introduced the entire FP&A function to the product as the future of the profession. Because the old platform had already lost the team's confidence, the new one landed as opportunity, not disruption.
What each team got once live
- Morrisons: the standout benefit is speed of change. No more going to a technology partner for a quote and a wait - the team makes changes directly, with the modeler agent accelerating further. Fasey, after thirty years in business planning: "it's just a million miles apart."
- The Economist: the modeler agent gave speed without losing understanding - Patel's team retained the ability to interrogate the model because they helped build it. She also used the analyst agent to get a late-night answer she could verify herself: fast, and right.
What both would do differently
- James Fasey shared that he wishes he hadn't taken so long to decide - but doesn't regret canvassing wide opinion first. In large organizations where the power of veto is real, skipping that step doesn't save time; it just moves the friction later.
- Binal Patel mentioned they started the conversation a year before go-live and is glad they did, but wishes they'd had more people dedicated to it, since business-as-usual kept encroaching. What went live is an "enhanced minimum viable product" - with more already planned.
The pattern underneath both stories
Strip away the industries and the sequence repeats:
- The legacy platform loses the team's trust well before anyone formally replaces it.
- Cost or complexity quietly caps what the team is willing to attempt.
- The migration sticks only when people outside the core project team shape it early - not just get informed of it.
Every capability that follows - faster modeling, agent-assisted analysis, live dashboards - compounds on that foundation. None of it substitutes for it.
