Overview
ERA is a UK-based tech infrastructure-as-a-service provider operating predominantly in the media and entertainment (M&E) sector. With clients ranging from global broadcasters like Warner Brothers Discovery to post-production and VFX houses, ERA has spent over 25 years evolving from a hardware sales business to a fully-fledged infrastructure services company. Following its acquisition by a private equity firm in 2022, ERA embarked on a new phase of strategic growth, requiring more sophisticated financial planning and control.
The Challenge
ERA faced a common issue among founder-led businesses: minimal forecasting infrastructure and heavy reliance on Excel. Taking investment allowed the business to strengthen it’s Executive team with the addition of an experienced PE CFO. This immediately brought into focus the need to satisfy investor expectations around financial reporting and the need to establish robust financial modelling capabilities. ERA sought a modern, user-friendly platform that could:
- Integrate with existing systems
- Replace fragmented Excel-based tools
- Enable scenario planning and better investor reporting
- Scale with the business as new team members came on board
Enter Mettryx and Causal
Paddy Gardner, CFO at ERA, had been aware of Causal for some time and chose to explore the platform further as part of the company’s digital transformation. After reaching out, Causal recommended Mettryx as an implementation partner due to their expertise and proximity.
The relationship between ERA and Mettryx began with a clear scope: to build a strategic forecasting model grounded in ERA’s operational realities while ensuring ease of use, scalability, and control. Phil Walker from Mettryx led the engagement.
The Approach
Mettryx kicked off the project with an in-person session to understand ERA’s goals. Drawing from deep experience, they rapidly built an initial model framework with minimal demand on ERA’s internal team. This early structure allowed the business to avoid being bogged down in granular modelling decisions and instead focus on aligning the model with strategic needs.
Mettryx brought more than technical know-how – they contributed senior-level finance experience that shaped the model’s real-world utility. For example, when ERA shared a complex Excel consolidation from their acquisition process, Mettryx interpreted, restructured, and integrated it into Causal with minimal disruption. This blend of modelling skill and finance leadership proved invaluable.
Outcomes from financial modelling
ERA now operates with a financial model that:
- Defines clear input structures, bringing consistency to the finance team’s activities
- Supports scenario planning to assess external risks and growth opportunities
- Powers investor updates and strategic discussions with dynamic, trackable forecasts
- Moves the business away from arbitrary growth assumptions to variable-driven planning
- Serves as a central tool for both internal and investor conversations
The transition to Causal – enabled by Mettryx – also forced a mindset shift within ERA, away from Excel dependency and towards modern, integrated planning. Change management and adoption were recognised as critical success factors.
Stakeholder Feedback
ERA’s Executive and investors have praised the model’s clarity and flexibility. Investor advisors, initially accustomed to Excel, acknowledged the potential of Causal for strategic use, including potential M&A activity. Internally, the finance team is beginning to adopt the model as a standard part of its toolkit, with plans for deeper integration.
What’s Next
ERA plans to build dashboards within Causal to create tailored views for stakeholders and enable live use in a number of scenarios such as strategic sales planning as well as board meetings – reducing the need for static presentations. Training and onboarding for the wider finance team is also in the pipeline, aiming to embed Causal as a default system alongside core platforms like Sage or Xero.
Client Reflections
Reflecting on the partnership, Paddy Gardner remarked:
“We engaged and delivered a model that will have strategic input to the business. The experience with Mettryx has been brilliant – quick, collaborative, and hugely valuable.”
Conclusion
ERA’s collaboration with Mettryx and adoption of Causal exemplify how a growing business can shift from fragmented, Excel-based practices to a centralised, insightful forecasting approach. The result is a finance function better equipped to support strategy, investor confidence, and long-term scalability.
For more on how Mettryx can support your business’s financial modelling transformation, contact info@mettryx.com.
In 2024, Causal was acquired by Lucanet.
Lucanet is the CFO Solution Platform built for modern finance leaders to automate processes including consolidation and financial planning, extended planning and analysis, disclosure management, ESG reporting, lease accounting, tax compliance and reporting, and banking and cash management. More than 6,000 companies around the world rely on Lucanet’s easy-to-use and out-of-the-box SaaS platform to manage their strategic and reporting needs with speed and accuracy.
The company is headquartered in Berlin with additional offices in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, China, Singapore, and the United States. Together with an international partner network, Lucanet’s 800+ employees worldwide focus their passion and expertise on the performance and success of the CFO office.
Acquisition press release: Causal joins the Lucanet Group
