CoverStory
Charting a new course
How Rebecca Hennessey FMAAT led the National Space Centre’s latest finance system to lift-off
Words: Annie Makoff Photography: Richard Grange/UNP
Project casebook
Company data
Revenue in 2023
Employees
Trustees
Results
• Cut financial reporting time from three to four weeks to 10 working days.
• Reduced invoice processing time by 30%, resulting in quicker payment for suppliers.
• Introduced robust procurement authorisation process.
The challenge
To update, automate and modernise the function’s financial system to improve processes and data accuracy and aid strategic decision-making.
Finance Headcount: 27
Key teams: IT, facilities and operations.
Approach
Implement an intuitive and streamlined financial system where a single source of truth (SSoT) aggregates data from a centralised source. Features include e-invoicing, a purchase ordering system and an expenses management system.
The National Space Centre, the UK’s largest space-themed visitor attraction, welcomes around 300,000 visitors every year. In June, it won the Silver Award for large visitor attraction of the year at the 2025 VisitEngland Awards for Excellence, making it one of the two best attractions in England.
And no wonder. The venue in Leicester features the UK’s largest planetarium, a 42-metre rocket tower containing two space rockets, artefacts found in space and more than 150 immersive experiences, from space travel and visiting a wormhole to recreating the big bang.
For Rebecca Hennessey FMAAT, financial controller at the attraction, it’s an incredible place to work, an environment that showcases both the pioneers of space exploration and the amazing world of astronomy.
“Our motto is ‘Space for everyone’,” she says. “And that means ensuring everyone, whoever they are, can access and enjoy our attraction, attend our educational workshops and engage with the incredible exhibitions and galleries. It’s for anyone and everyone.”
Hennessey and her team play a crucial role in the financial running of the centre, ensuring it remains financially stable and a going concern, as well as contributing to business strategy.
One small step for finance...
Now the centre’s latest finance system has been successfully implemented – the first such system in 25 years – the team is in a position to work as finance business partners, providing financial insights based on real-time data to help drive strategy and influence decision-making.
It wasn’t always like this, however.
The new system means we can influence decisions because we have real-time data.
Image: Richard Grange/UNP
Far from stellar
Despite the innovative nature of the visitor attraction itself, Hennessey says the back-end functions were somewhat lacking.
“I think I lost my mind with the old finance system,” she admits. “There were a lot of errors and it could take weeks to pull reports together, so data then became obsolete because things had moved on. It was cumbersome and clunky, and we had to rely on the human eye a lot to spot errors. It was a manually intensive process.”
According to Hennessey, multiple spreadsheets dealing with different reports linked to each other, so if one broke, they all did. In addition, the expenses process was manual, invoices were often sent by post, there was no official authorisation or sign-off process for procurement and financial reports often took three to four weeks to complete.
All in all, the systems were not fit for purpose. For Hennessey, who had initially joined the organisation as a temp and quickly progressed to a permanent role as financial controller, something had to change.
I think I lost my mind with the old finance system... there were a lot of errors and it could take weeks to pull reports together.
Image: Brothers Keeper
Rocket-fuelled change
The organisation was already undergoing a major new governance structure project to comply with charity commission rules, but Hennessey felt a financial transformation project was needed too.
“It just had to happen, even though we were already undergoing one massive change,” she says. “The finance function really needed to start doing things differently, so I was the driving force of that transformation drive.”
By all accounts, it was a quick process. Unlike some financial transformation drives that are implemented in stages over a period of 12 to 18 months, the new financial system at the National Space Centre was implemented in just 10 weeks.
“It’s not recommended to carry out such a big transformation drive in such a short space of time, but we were under pressure to complete the process to align with our year-end accounts,” says Hennessey. “I was working over Boxing Day to get it completed.”
The new system went live on 14 January 2025 with Hennessey and an external organisation on hand to provide training and support to the rest of the team.
Winning the rest of the team over to the benefits of the new system was one of the main challenges, she explains. There were concerns it would add to the workload and resistance from some team members who believed it would make some processes, such as procurement, “more difficult”.
Fast forward to September 2025 and most, if not all, of the team has been won over.
“The system was always intended to make people’s lives easier, not harder,” Hennessey says. “We have a mature team, so it was hard sometimes to convince people that the technology would improve things. They are starting to come round to the idea now.”
In fact, one of the main achievements of the project was when a team member in her 60s told Hennessey that she had got to grips with the system and was excited by it. “She said, ‘I never thought at my age I’d learn something new, but I have’,” Hennessey recalls. “She’d discovered a feature of the new system and was excitedly telling me about it. That’s when you know you’ve achieved something: when the team start to see the benefits and learn new skills along the way.”
Data and automation
So what about the centre’s new financial system itself? How do its systems and processes benefit the finance function and the wider business strategy?
“It’s a really intuitive, robust new system, which uses AI and automation to strengthen and streamline processes,” says Hennessey. “All our data is held in one source now, whether it is budgets, forecasts, expenses or numbers from last year. So if you want to run a report, it produces all those sets of numbers in one go. You get the holistic picture.”
Data is also produced in real time, so figures from the report will be accurate to that particular day. “It would take three to four weeks to run a finance report, so it almost became meaningless – you’re halfway through the next month and you have to make a decision based on out-of-date information,” she explains. “But the new system means we can influence decisions because we have real-time data. It allows us to be much more transparent about where we are as a business at that point in time.”
In addition, e-invoicing has been introduced along with a fully automated expenses system. A fully streamlined purchase ordering system means that suppliers are also paid quicker.
There are tighter controls around procurement too. Previously, there was no official sign-off process, so individuals could place an order without authorisation and the team would only find out once an invoice arrived. That has now changed thanks to a new authorisation process.
The transformation has been far-reaching and, by all accounts, has improved every area of the finance function. But, as Hennessey points out, it has not just been a transformation for the finance team, but for the whole business.
Charting a new course
How Rebecca Hennessey FMAAT led the National Space Centre’s latest finance system to lift-off.
Words: Annie Makoff Photography: Richard Grange/UNPRICHARD GRANGE / UNP
