With adoption of cloud-based financials and corporate performance management (CPM)applications gaining speed, it appears that Finance executives have become more comfortable with the notion of trusting their sensitive financial data to cloud-based applications. In the CPMarena, budgeting & planning has been the front-runner in terms of cloud adoption but there’s increasing interest in cloud-based financial consolidation application solutions by medium to large organizations. However, the financial consolidation applications of many cloud-based CPM vendors are newer and don’t offer the same level of functionality as more experienced vendors.
If you are evaluating cloud-based CPM solutions, but are not satisfied with the financial consolidation and board reporting capabilities or need to address regulatory reporting requirements for US GAAP, IFRS, DFAST, CCAR, FinRep, CoRep, Solvency II or other reporting, don’t compromise. Some vendors, including Tagetik, now deliver this level of capability in a multi-tenant cloud environment. So, do your due diligence.
You should also consider Hybrid Cloud. For example, if your company is interested in cloud-based planning, but is not yet comfortable with financial consolidation & reporting capabilities on the cloud you can take a hybrid approach, with planning in the cloud and consolidation on-premises. But if you have a cloud strategy you should expect that eventually you will be moving consolidation to the cloud as well. Therefore, if you go with on-premises consolidation and reporting now, make sure it can be easily migrated to the cloud when you are ready. Surprisingly, not all vendors have a cloud strategy for their consolidation products. Keep the future in mind as you select a vendor since most consolidation applications remain in place for more than 10 years. You will likely need to live with your decision for a long time.
To learn more about what to look for in a financial consolidation application, check out this eBookthat highlights the 3 things your financial consolidation software doesn’t have, but should.
By Paul Giardina, from: http://www.tagetik.com/blog/authors/paul-giardina/2015-02-is-it-time-to-move-your-financial-consolidations-to-the-cloud#.VN4_oObF98E