$18,000 CAD + HST. Approximately three weeks. One defined initiative.
Define what the payments channel must support before you commit to technology, providers or implementation decisions.
Who this is for
CFOs, Controllers and COOs at established Canadian distributors and wholesalers, $15M to $250M in revenue, with a modernization initiative already approved or under serious consideration.
You do not need a payments problem to run a Sprint. You need a decision coming.
What triggers it
- An ERP or finance transformation
- An automation or AI initiative
- A new payment platform or provider
- An acquisition, geographic expansion, or a step up in operating complexity
- A customer-experience or operating-model redesign
Why this comes before the decision, not after
Payments is rarely a line item in a modernization business case. It is assumed — that the new system will handle it, that the provider will make it work, that the integration partner has it covered.
Each of those parties knows their own half. None of them owns the span from invoice to close.
So the requirements get set by whoever happens to be in the room when the question comes up. The gaps surface after the architecture is fixed, when changing them costs real money and the manual workaround becomes permanent.
A Sprint is cheap relative to the decision it informs. That is the whole argument for running one.
What the Sprint examines
Scoped to the initiative in front of you, not to the whole company:
- The payment flows the initiative touches, end to end
- The systems and interfaces those flows depend on
- The operating dependencies — who does what, where the manual steps sit, what breaks if a person leaves
- The controls affected, and where accountability currently sits
- What the initiative will require of the payments channel that it cannot deliver today
Fixed scope
- One defined business or technology initiative
- Up to five stakeholder interviews
- Approximately three weeks
- Fixed fee, agreed before work starts
What it excludes
Stated plainly, so there is no ambiguity about what you are buying:
- Procurement
- Vendor selection
- Detailed implementation design
- Implementation management
This is decision support. It ends with a recommendation you can act on, take to a board, or hand to the partner who will build it.
What you get
Six client-facing outputs:
- Executive decision brief — the recommendation, in CFO language, short enough to be read.
- Initiative-specific payments-channel map — how money and information actually move through the flows this initiative touches.
- Business and operating requirements — what the payments channel must support.
- Dependency and risk register — what has to be true, and what happens if it is not.
- Capability-gap assessment — the distance between what you have and what the initiative needs.
- Prioritized 90-day roadmap and supporting business case — sequenced by what has to happen before what.
Vendor-neutral
No product to sell, no referral fee, no platform to defend. If the recommendation is that your current setup is adequate for the initiative, the brief will say that.
Why PCS
I spent three decades on the provider side of this — at TD in commercial banking and cash management, at Bell Nexxia commercializing technology products, and at Global Payments building the national VAR and ISV channel that a great many Canadian businesses still transact through.
That is why I can tell you what a payments decision will actually cost you downstream. Your provider will not. The one trying to win the business will understate it. Your ERP partner knows their half.
Where the Diagnostic fits
If there is no planned initiative but something is visibly breaking inside one payment flow, the Invoice-to-Close Diagnostic is the right instrument, at $4,500 CAD + HST.
It is not a prerequisite. A Sprint can be bought directly.
Start with a 30-minute conversation
Enough to establish which initiative is in scope, what decision is coming, and whether a Sprint, a Diagnostic, or nothing from me is the right answer.
