The programmer turned finance professional explains why learning to sell was harder than learning accounting and how intentionality helps CFOs avoid burning out their teams.
Brian Nyongesa remembers the contract that changed everything. I&M Bank needed to switch off their old reconciliation system by 31 December. They gave SBSL the contract on 20th November, with only three weeks to go live. It seemed impossible, but Brian and his team worked day and night through challenges that would have broken most implementation teams.
"Once we managed to go live by 15 December, the bank trusted us to deliver all other modules. That was a game changer for us. Once that client was happy, many others kept calling with different automation needs within finance That was the biggest win in terms of tilting things in our favour.," he says.
SBSL’s value proposition is optimising the office of the CFO in finance, risk and compliance. What sets the business apart, as Brian puts it, is that when they talk to CFOs, they speak risk and finance first and technology second.
"I go in extremely confident when I tell someone I can automate IFRS 16 because I also understand the standard from an accounting perspective. If I'm explaining IFRS 9, operational risk, financial risk or group consolidation, I'm talking about automation - but also how the process works. This results in powerful discussions because the client sees us more of a partner than an IT vendor," he explains.
Switching gears
Brian’s journey with automation began in Standard 8 when his mother came home one day with a computer. She hired a tutor to teach him Microsoft Office. He suspects she wanted him to help type out her Masters’ thesis, but the exposure sparked an interest that followed him through high school. There, he took computer studies and learned programming in Pascal and database languages, becoming an expert.
"Immediately after high school when my dad came to pick me from school, I was so happy to be done with high school and looking forward to a restful few months. We used to live in Western. He told me he'd booked for me a bus to go to Nairobi and apply for CPA at Strathmore University. So literally I came to Nairobi by bus, went to Strathmore and started in accounting January. It was crazy in the beginning but over time I got to understand accounting very well after immense effort," he recalls.
Brian later joined Moi University to study computer engineering while continuing his CPA. In his second year, he switched to a BCom. At the time, he had a job at the Ministry of Finance, where they called him ‘the system guy’ because he dealt with accounting systems.
Brian became the first employee at Aaro East Africa, where they implemented the Aaro system for financial reporting automation.
"We got a client called AAR Group. They were in both healthcare and insurance, and they took a chance on us. It's funny when you take AAR and add O you get AARO. That's also how it's spelled. Before we go other clients, people wondered whether we were related,” he explains.
The team landed more clients, some of which include EABL, KCB, I&M bank and others, but two years in, Brian decided to become a consultant. But before making that transition, he realised he needed to learn how to sell. So he quit Aaro and joined Aquavita, a company that sells water purification systems to blue chip corporations.
"Selling was something I had never thought I would get into. So, I had to learn a lot and overcome that fear of rejection. You're making phone calls to get meetings. Sometimes people don't understand what you want to sell. Selling was a crazy challenge that is not natural for someone who was doing programming and then went into finance," he says.
The three pillars
Brian’s philosophy for optimising the CFO's office has three pillars : people, processes and systems. How the three elements blend often determines whether a CFO can truly partner with the business.
"With these three things, people, process and systems, a CFO can sleep slightly better. For us, we want to focus on the office of the CFO. Try to make sure that the team focuses more on high value tasks. All the mundane tasks are fully automated and any systems that they have are fully optimised," he says
Transformation in finance, risk and compliance energises him because of its clear impact. He often goes to a client, finds them at point A and helps craft a vision together. Sometimes, he visits clients just to watch people using SBSL’s solutions to improve their work. He encourages CFOs to pay attention to agentic AI, saying it has potential to change how the finance teams will work in the near future.
"By the time you deliver the solutions to the clients, the gratitude and the impact that you leave really motivates us to keep going," he says.
The entrepreneur enjoys golf because it demands discipline. Although he finds the game challenging, he is constantly playing against himself to improve.
“When you start, you have to learn. You have to follow some routines. Next time you come in, you want to do keep improving,” he says.
