Finance teams often underestimate how long digitization takes, and that miscalculation leads to stalled projects and budget overruns. Here is what a realistic timeline looks like for a company with 50 to 300 employees.
Phase breakdown
Discovery and mapping: 3 to 6 weeks
Before any software is selected, someone needs to document how money actually moves through the business. This is slower than expected because people describe processes differently than they actually perform them.
Tool selection and procurement: 4 to 8 weeks
Shortlisting, demos, security reviews, and contract negotiation take time. Rushing this phase causes regret. One manufacturing company in Ontario spent four months undoing a poorly chosen AP automation tool because procurement skipped the integration review.
Implementation and testing: 6 to 14 weeks
Data migration, staff training, parallel running with legacy systems, and UAT all sit here. The more customization involved, the longer this stretches.
Stabilization: 4 to 8 weeks post-launch
Expect a period where the team is slower than before. New workflows take time to become habitual. Budget for this. It is not failure, it is normal.
End-to-end, a realistic mid-size digitization project runs 6 to 9 months. Projects promising results in 8 weeks are almost always describing one narrow process, not a full transformation.