In a recent CFO.com webinar, “The CFO’s Guide to Navigating the Cloud”, Forrester VP and principal analyst Paul Hamerman and other industry experts, I couldn’t help but get even more excited about what’s happening in the world of cloud financials.
Paul (a former CPA who has been studying the financial software market for a decade) talks about the major shift taking place in the way organizations are managing business processes. His research clearly shows that:
- Cloud is becoming main stream because it helps finance better serve the business – it’s that simple.
- On-premise ERP systems are losing their attraction, mainly because they are so difficult to upgrade.
- Cloud subscriptions are going up due to speed, flexibility, and ability to reduce the upgrade lag and dependence on IT.
In the above graphic Paul spoke to shows how past, present and future financial processes flow and should be aligned with systems.
- Paul points out that many finance organizations struggle with these processes because they are disconnected and labor-intensive
- And, if you want to run your business better, you need to tie these processes together so that they feed off each other and share business information in a timely manner
Later in the presentation the VP of Business Solutions and Applications Development of a leading food producer is doing just that. He shared his insight on:
- Drivers for moving to the cloud - they had the perfect opportunity to move from traditional financial systems to the cloud when they were spun off
- Risk - in his opinion, there was no risk, as they were already successfully operating on a cloud model in other parts of the business. “It’s really just another data center,” he says.
- Security - he makes the case that the cloud is actually more secure than other models because of the extra levels of security
Paul also talks through the various deployment options (with a great snapshot of hosted cloud versus multitenant SaaS deployment models) and offers his recommendations for all financial organizations seeking to improve processes.
As pointed out during the interview with the VP of Business Solutions, cloud is “the new way of doing business.” And the research shows that many other finance organizations are moving — or planning to move — this way because of the usefulness of cloud financials to the business. We think that’s pretty exciting.
What are your thoughts? Are you moving your financial applications to the cloud?
By Rob Honens, from: http://www.tagetik.com/blog/authors/rob-honens/2014-04-24-cfo-cloud#.U2Ed2lVdV8E