Gartner forecasts cloud computing to be a $278 billion business by 2021, as companies increasingly adopt cloud services to realize their desired digital business outcomes. In a separate survey of 439 global financial executives, the research company found that finance is moving to the cloud much faster than expected.
By 2020, 36 percent of enterprises are expected to be using the cloud to support more than half of their transactional systems of record.
With cloud technology promising to provide the speed and agility that the business requires, including generating significant cost savings and new sources of revenue, it’s not surprising the cloud market is experiencing a boom.
While companies have experienced both organic and inorganic growth, many have struggled to keep pace with rapidly changing technology landscape. Their businesses are saddled with legacy technology infrastructures that are slowing progress towards the achievement of strategic objectives as they are slow to react to change.
Given the need to react more quickly, at the same time become more proactive and drive business performance, senior finance executives are turning to cloud-based financial solutions to provide real-time management information reporting and decision support.
Adopting cloud not a simple and quick decision
Looking at the expected growth metrics for the cloud market and then hearing of all the novel opportunities offered by cloud computing, CFOs and CIOs are enticed to believe that it is only a matter of time before the organization’s computing technology and data is skyward.
However, over the course of my career I have come to understand that the only thing right about a forecast is that it’s wrong. Either the forecast is close to reality or very far from reality.
Cost savings is cited most often by senior finance executives as the reason for adopting cloud technology. Considering that cloud is essentially a form of outsourcing arrangement in which client organizations use the internet to connect to a variety of applications, storage services, hardware resources, platforms and other IT capabilities offered by cloud service providers, upfront capital investment and maintenance costs are minimal.
This is because the cloud service provider owns the necessary hardware and other resources needed to deliver these services and is also responsible for employing the staff required to support them. Unlike on-premise solutions where the business has to incur large capital outlays for hardware and IT support staff, cloud is an operating expense (except implementation costs which can be capitalized), that is payable as and when incurred.
With cloud, a business is able to add new licences to its subscription when it needs them and scale its licensing costs with its growth, rather than buying in bulk upfront. This is in direct contrast to traditional on-premise software where companies in anticipation of business growth have over invested in IT systems hoping to add more users to the user list soon after the growth is achieved.
However, when deciding whether to invest in cloud or not, CFOs should look beyond cost benefits. In addition to cost savings, they should also consider tactical and more strategic and structural issues. Unfortunately, the challenge for many finance professionals is that when evaluating investments the focus is solely on cost. We fail to examine and evaluate the non-financial risks and strategic impact of the investment on the business.
Strategic and structural considerations
As I have written in the past, most organizations get caught up in the hype of new technologies and end up making technology investments that are unaligned to the strategy of the business. There is no strong business case for investing in the new technology. Don’t allow yourself to fall into the same trap.
Investing in cloud is not an IT or finance only decision. Decisions of what to migrate to the cloud, when to migrate it, and how to transition from an on-premise environment to a cloud-based environment all require a collaborated effort if the organization is to achieve its stated objectives.
Further, transitioning to the cloud computing environment is not a matter of flicking the switch up and down. You need to have deeper understanding of the cloud resources (public cloud, private cloud, community cloud and hybrid cloud) available on the market, their delivery models (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS) and how these all fit together into your business and technology model.
Understanding the cloud model will help you determine whether cloud is appropriate in the context of your business purpose and risks. For example, in the case of public cloud, the applications and cloud-based services are positioned as utilities available to anyone who signs on.
If over the years your company has built and strengthened IT capabilities that differentiate you from competitors, migrating to the cloud can mean walking away from your success recipe and expose yourself to vulnerabilities.
Therefore, if you are planning to migrate your on-premise computing environment to the cloud, take a long-term view of your IT environment and determine what type of applications are candidates for the cloud and which will not be transitioned until the distant future.
Ideally, you should start with applications that have low risk associated with them or those that have a business need that cannot be met using traditional computing capabilities. Once you have build greater comfort and trust in the cloud, you can then scale to include other applications.
The pain of disintegration
It is no secret that many businesses today are re-evaluating their technology infrastructure and leveraging new technologies to respond faster and be more flexible. But is cloud computing right for your business? Is speed to deploy more important to you than having systems that talk to each other?
In a world where each cloud service provider is claiming that their solution is better than the next one on the same shelf, CFOs and CIOs are grappling with the decision of which cloud service provider to go with. As a result, the company ends up doing business with more than one vendor to compensate for the shortfalls of the other system.
The problem arises when the cloud-based application from one vendor is unable to work with an application from another provider resulting in more than one version of the truth. In other cases, the company’s on-premise IT infrastructure does not allow sharing data with multiple cloud-based applications, which in turn results in finance spending time consolidating and reconciling data from disparate systems in excel.
Given that the cloud model depends on providing essentially a standardized package across the board, it is important to weigh the pros and cons of foregoing customization versus rapid implementation. Because the cloud market is projected to grow in the coming years, many IT solution providers are channeling money towards cloud-based solutions. This has resulted in some vendors withdrawing IT support on legacy ERP systems and phasing them out.
In some cases, the vendors have installed upgrades to the same solutions. The problem with these solutions is that they were originally not built with modern business requirements in mind hence they can only get you a few more years of support.
It is therefore important for CFOs and CIOs to be cognizant whether the solution was originally designed as a cloud-based solution, or it is a modified version of a solution initially designed to function in a traditional on-premise client-ownership model.
With data being found everywhere today and advanced analytics playing a critical role in supporting key decision making, delivering one version of truth has never been so important. In order to make sense of all the data at its disposal a company should focus its efforts on centralizing data management and IT policies. Having a single data repository ensures everyone is drinking from the same well for information and insights.
However, in companies where IT governance is weak the tendency is for teams to autonomously adopt cloud-based solutions that meet their individual needs. This is counter-productive to data management centralization efforts as data normally ends up spread across multiple cloud-based systems that are dis-aggregated.
Just imagine a scenario where FP&A, tax, treasury, procurement, supply chain, and other finance functions each identify and select their own cloud solution. Consolidating and analyzing relevant data from these various systems to get a big picture view of business performance in itself is a huge task to complete as that data is divided across many domains.
While each cloud-based move may look beneficial in isolation, adopted together they may increase operating expenses to a level that undermines the anticipated savings.
Control versus no control
Although cloud-based solutions offer more affordable options and more flexible payment plans than traditional software providers, the issue of data control is still a concern. Cyber criminals are getting smarter by the day,and the fact is, whether organizational data resides on the internet or offline on the company’s network, it’s never completely immune to attack.
When it comes to data security, it is imperative for CFOs and CIOs to know that the moment data is no longer in-house, the business may end up having less control over who has access to key systems and data. The fact that you have outsourced your IT systems and data control to a third party does not make your company immune to a lawsuit in the event of a breach. You therefore need to sign agreements that protect you against various types of misfortunes.
Although the cloud service provider employs a team of IT support staff to monitor and perform regular threat assessments and deploy the latest patch immediately, the organization should not relax and assume the house is in order. You need to get strong assurances from your cloud vendor that your business data is safe.
You also need to know where your data is stored, the applicable data laws, how often it is backed up and whether you are able to perform audits on the data. Other factors to consider include end of agreements for convenience. Many software vendors try to lock in client organizations for a significant period of time. This in turn makes it difficult for client organizations to change vendors without incurring costs or changing systems some way.
Thus, when negotiating an agreement with a cloud-based service provider, try by all means to ensure that you are not locked-in for lengthy periods just in case you need to change technology providers in the near future.
Don’t rush to the cloud without a clearly defined vision and road map. Engage in plenty of deliberation to ensure the new surpasses the old, sample technologies with less risk and related influences on the business and then scale the adoption.