Heart of Midlothian FC Transforms Financial Operations with NetSuite & Eureka Solutions

Heart of Midlothian Football Club (commonly known as “Hearts”) is a professional football club based in Edinburgh, Scotland. With a rich history dating back to 1874, Hearts is one of the oldest and most successful football clubs in the country. Beyond their on-field success, Hearts is committed to community engagement and operational excellence, continually investing in infrastructure, talent, and technology to support their growth.

WHAT WERE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN FC’S CHALLENGES?

Prior to implementing NetSuite with Eureka Solutions, the club relied on a legacy system for Finance and Payroll, which had been in place for 20+ years.

Appointed to oversee the club’s software transition, new Financial Controller Shona Cameron played a key role in the project.

Commenting on the previous software, Shona said: “Reporting was at a summary level with any detailed output requiring manual intervention; we had no consistent purchase-to-pay processes, and it wasn’t fit for purpose. Even the parts of the system that did work felt slow and clunky. Tasks such as journal uploads required manual effort, making even basic processes cumbersome.”

Adding complexity to the business’ systems infrastructure was the fact that several functions were executed from wider systems. This fragmented setup presented several operational challenges for Hearts:

• Archaic Reporting: Financial reporting was cumbersome, inconsistent, and relied heavily on manual processes.
• Lack of Automation: Processes like purchase-to-pay and journal uploads were manual, slow, and prone to errors.
• Disconnected Systems: The lack of integration between finance, HR, and payroll systems resulted in inefficiencies and duplicated efforts.
• Limited Scalability: The system could not meet the growing reporting and data needs of the club.

With these issues causing continuous difficulty for the finance team at Hearts, month-end processes were taking a long time to complete, meaning that reports couldn’t be shared with the rest of the business quickly enough to take action.

SELECTING A SOLUTION

In their search for a modern, flexible and scalable ERP system, Hearts evaluated several options.

The team initially considered Microsoft Dynamics 365. This platform was deemed as attractive due to its initial lower set up cost. However, upon further evaluation this platform lacked the flexibility and customisable features that Hearts needed – much like the legacy system previously used. The team also discovered that despite initial costs being low, these were likely to escalate and quickly become very expensive.

Hearts also evaluated Access Financials; however, this platform was found to lack the seamless finance and operational integration needed to support the football club.

Ultimately, NetSuite was selected for a variety of reasons:

• The fully integrated platform had a consistent user interface across modules, including in-built UK Payroll provided by Zone Payroll
• The long-term cost was predictable, with capped future price increases.
• NetSuite had the flexibility to handle complex reporting and operational requirements.
• Eureka Solutions could demonstrate relevant experience with football clubs and other sporting organisations

NETSUITE IMPLEMENTATION OVERVIEW

After working hard to understand Hearts’ requirements, Eureka Solutions officially welcomed the club onboard as a client in August 2022. Shortly after, Shona joined Hearts to lead the finance team’s involvement.

Commenting on Eureka Solutions’ approach, Shona said:

“The initial ‘tough love’ during test migrations – strict timelines and attention to detail – felt intense at the time, but it helped ensure the project stayed on track.”

Key aspects included:

• Structured Migration: Eureka Solutions worked closely with Hearts to define their chart of accounts, classification fields, and reporting structures, ensuring the system was tailored to their needs.
• Rapid Go-Live: Despite the intensive planning and testing phase, Hearts successfully went live two days ahead of schedule, thanks to Eureka Solutions’ project management.
• End-to-End Integration: Finance, HR, Payroll and reporting functions were centralised within NetSuite
• Customised Enhancements: Post-go-live, Hearts added bespoke fields (e.g. Event IDs for hospitality reporting) and introduced multiple classification layers for granular analysis.
• Fixed Asset Reporting: Covering both tangible and intangible assets such as player contracts.

THE RESULTS

After go-live, Hearts saw measurable improvements across several areas:

• Enhanced Reporting & Insights: From European P&L tracking to grant-funded projects and squad-level performance costs, reporting is now instantaneous and comprehensive.
• Operational Efficiency: Month-end close reduced from twelve working days to six, with scope for further improvement.
• Empowered Teams: Departments can access real-time data, enabling proactive decision-making and reducing reliance on finance for basic reporting.
• Streamlined processes: Manual spreadsheets largely replaced by automated reporting and project tagging.
• Strong Support Partnership: Eureka Solutions continues to provide responsive, in-depth support, acting as an extension of the Hearts finance team.

“NetSuite has saved us a considerable amount of time at month-end and unlocked new reporting capabilities. While it requires effort to set up processes properly, the outcomes generally justify the additional resource.”

KEY BENEFITS REALISED

• 50% reduction in time for month end
• 100% removal of spreadsheets for project, grant and department tracking
• Full integration of all critical back-office functions
• Non-finance users empowered with the analysis they need

LOOKING AHEAD

Following the success of Hearts’ NetSuite project with Eureka Solutions, Financial Controller Shona is now focused on further future enhancements, including:

• Implementing a virtual debit card solution for expense management.
• Integrating Ticketmaster via Eureka Solutions’ Besyncly platform to automate match-day revenue imports.
• Exploring budgeting and planning add-ons to augment NetSuite’s core capabilities.

WORKING WITH EUREKA SOLUTIONS

Due to the positive experience, Shona Cameron and the Hearts team have already referred NetSuite and Eureka Solutions to other organisations. The combination of a robust platform and Eureka Solutions’ hands-on support has been instrumental in modernising their financial operations, driving efficiency, and enabling data-driven decision-making across the club.

“I have great faith in the team’s in-depth knowledge of NetSuite. If there’s ever an issue and Eureka Solutions can’t fix it, it really is a product limitation with the platform itself. Their responsiveness and attitude set them apart from other support teams we’ve dealt with—you never get “refer back to documentation.” They stay with you until it’s solved.”

— Shona Cameron, Financial Controller, Heart of Midlothian FC