Future Finance The ERP Problem for Finance Teams to Replace Consultant Lock-In with AI - Santiago Nestares
Nov 26, 2025
Santiago Nestares, co-founder and CEO of DualEntry, previously scaled Benetago to over $100 million. He shares insights about the limitations of legacy ERP systems and the issues of consultant lock-in. Discussing DualEntry's AI-native platform, he highlights its ability to perform rapid data migrations in under 24 hours. Santiago emphasizes the contrast between AI-native designs and traditional models, which often complicate implementations. He offers a fresh perspective that positions ERP transitions as smooth experiences rather than painful procedures.
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From $100M Scale-Up Pain To Product
- Santiago Nestares built DualEntry after painful experiences scaling Benetago past $100M and facing legacy ERP bottlenecks.
- He describes mid-market ERPs as consultant-dependent, antiquated systems that created his motivation to rebuild ERP from scratch.
Consultant Economics Drove Bad ERP Design
- Legacy ERPs evolved a partner-dependent distribution model that incentivized complex implementations and consultant lock-in.
- Santiago argues that this design steered the market toward intentionally hard-to-implement products to boost partner billable hours.
Get Data Live First, Then Iterate
- Avoid long, risky manual data freezes during migrations by using an automated migration that can make data live quickly.
- Santiago recommends getting live data first and iterating workflows and training afterwards to reduce implementation risk.