Thought Leaders, Industry veterans, Visionary CEOs, and influential media voices have been responsible for driving the digital transformation mandate in their own impactful ways. However, nothing has been as impactful as the global pandemic – “COVID-19”. It has brought about a paradigm shift in the way we run our enterprises. It has happened so abruptly that enterprises have been left with no choice but to accelerate efforts across digital transformation, legacy modernization, cloud enablement and cybersecurity.
One Function at a time.
An enterprise has several vital functions. The pandemic has clearly tested their business continuity readiness. The people department, the administration, the finance department have all been tested rigorously.
Let us consider the finance function. Enterprises which have their financial systems on-premise have found it extremely difficult to process vendor payments, manage collections and receivables and most importantly, process the salary of their employees on time.
The monitoring of the financial health of an organization itself has become a challenging affair because of the lockdown and social distancing mandates as well as the travel restrictions.
Financials on Cloud? Has it been seamless?
Enterprises with their financials or ERP on the cloud have been able to manage the pandemic related challenges better. A finance head responsible for payables, and salaries, of a reputed organization with more than a few thousand employees had conveyed that they could process salaries and make almost all vendor payments on time only because of the Oracle Financials Cloud implementation that the enterprise had undertaken two years back.
As per this finance head, it would have been impossible for them to make even employee salary payouts on time, had their Financial systems been on-premise.
What’s the future?
Gartner HR Survey Reveals 88% of Organizations have encouraged or required employees to Work from Home (WFH) due to Coronavirus. Many reputed organizations employing more than 100,000 people have commented that WFH is here to stay even after the COVID-19 pandemic comes under control. If such policies are adopted and organizations decide to reduce infrastructure costs and administrative costs with respect to office rent, supplies, internet, etc., then the critical enterprise systems need to be extended much beyond the office perimeter. In fact, it must be made ubiquitously accessible. It seems very clear that the WFH is here to stay and so moving your enterprise systems such as financials to the cloud is an imperative.
A word of caution.
An enterprise’s financial software or the ERP cannot be moved to the Cloud in a jiffy. It must be well-planned to ensure proper access controls, security of the system and data and continuous availability of the system. In addition, it must be compliant with laws of the land and mandates with respect to technology and data.
Oracle Financials Cloud, is what we have implemented for ourselves and for customers across industries such as technology service providers for shipping, travel companies etc. Hence, we believe that the benefits of moving your ERP or financials to the cloud are immense.
Why move the Financials or ERP to Cloud?
When you move the Financials or ERP to Cloud, let us say Oracle Financials Cloud, you enjoy the following value:
- Secure: The enterprise’s financial data and financial system is completely secure on the cloud. Oracle ensures that the highest level of security can be enjoyed by its customers on Oracle Financial Cloud.
- Ubiquitous: The ERP or Oracle Financials Cloud will provide a single source of truth with respect to the enterprise’s financial data. Furthermore, the Financials cloud will ensure that the relevant and authorized users can access the financials from any place and any device and take instant decisions on the go.
- Available: Enterprise can ensure 24*7 availability of the financial data on the cloud.
- Flexible: The finance department of the enterprise can scale up or downsize cloud requirements on a “as-you-go” basis in an instant. They need not depend on their IT teams and can enjoy flexible provisioning as per functional requirements.
- Cost-Effective: The enterprise can enjoy cost advantages with a “pay-as-you-use” model. With upgrades, security, and provisioning becoming seamless, they can reduce the man-hours spent on such tasks and enable IT teams to focus on core business activities.
With financials being on Oracle Financials Cloud, the benefits of seamless integration with back-end databases is seamless irrespective of the database used. However, since most enterprises use Oracle database, the integration and flow of data to and from the applications to Oracle databases is swift. The Oracle Financials Cloud also equips enterprises with cutting-edge insights and reports which can accelerate informed decision making and attainment of strategic goals.
“Enterprise Everywhere” will be the new normal. Get your most vital department future-ready with Oracle Financials Cloud.
