It’s Only a Matter of “When”
Cloud adoption is on the rise and shows no signs of slowing down. According to Gartner Research, more of the market will move their core ERP systems to the cloud over the next three years. Is your organization part of the movement? If not, you need to consider the benefits.
Cloud solutions tout increased efficiency, cost savings, flexibility, and agility. But the advantages go beyond cost containment and convenience. How can cloud benefit your organization?
Freedom from system and application management – Cloud delivery puts the onus on the vendor to oversee, manage and maintain the systems. When organizations offload applications to the cloud, IT can focus on core competencies and more strategic projects that add business value.
Pay-as-you-go-pricing – The financial model of cloud enables organizations to pay for what they use and scale as requirements change. It also shifts IT from a capital to operational expense. While capital expenses may offer greater predictability, they also require a large upfront investment. The move to cloud shifts infrastructure costs to an operational expense, so companies can scale based on business need, align technology investments with business goals and ensure they aren’t paying for technology that’s not being used.
Agility to respond to change – Cloud adoption has been embraced for its compelling bottom-line advantages, but it also delivers top-line benefit, providing line of business managers with agility to respond to business changes. For example, a company may decide to add talent management and predictive analytic capabilities in order to understand and reduce turnover on a particular manufacturing line and keep up with growing business demand.
Model flexibility – Opting for full suite ERP or a segment of the suite will depend on many factors from organization philosophy to business requirements and future roadmap. Organizations can move some apps to the cloud and keep others on premise or enlist support from a managed services provider until they’re ready for cloud deployment. When prioritizing which apps to move to the cloud, consider the business objective and how value is measured. A business process assessment can uncover opportunities for improvement and ensure the strategy supports short and long-term goals.
Access to the latest innovations – Automatic updates are just one advantage of the cloud, giving users access to the latest and greatest version of their software. With some vendors executing a cloud-first strategy, business users can get faster access to innovation and take advantage of the newest features or functionality as soon as it becomes available.
Contact us to find out how to move to the cloud and how to select the right system for your business.