Three Questions to Help You Understand Current Finance Strategy for Moving to the Cloud

In Q4 of 2019, SAPinsider surveyed 102 members of our audience for an upcoming report, “Streamlining Financial Processes in the Cloud,” to understand their current finance strategy, whether that involves cloud-native solutions, and how they plan on meeting their strategic needs and objectives. We found that the majority (54%) ran at least one financial solution in the cloud.

SAPinsider interviewed Mitresh Kundalia, Director of the SAP practice at Quality Systems and Software, as part of the research.

Q: Do cloud-native finance applications have benefits over on-premise? What are they?

Finance businesses face two major concerns: They have DNA that makes them concerned about compliance (and rightfully so), and they are more sensitive to data security. Due to these legitimate concerns, overall adoption of the cloud will be slower for finance businesses, but organizations with less-complex processes are becoming more open to cloud adoption.

Maintenance and support are the biggest factors in value addition, with automatic upgrades following close behind. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a factor but safety of data is the priority. There were always concerns about security in cloud-native but increased awareness and education has reached the end customers and soothed most of these concerns. We’re seeing that organizations with less-complex processes are more open to cloud than global giants with extreme complexities.

Improved maintenance and support with automatic upgrades represent the biggest factor in value addition for moving applications to the cloud. Support and maintenance traditionally cause headaches for finance organizations. Cloud makes it easier to access data.

Having streamlined processes is important whether you’re on cloud or not. Streamlined processes deliver more benefits than cloud itself.

Q: Can all the different cloud and on-premise finance solutions that integrate with SAP ERP make it complicated for SAP customers to set their finance technology strategy? How so?

This is going to be a paradigm shift. If we’re going to move everything to the cloud, the first few months for integrated systems will be tough, but after that, customers will start realizing the benefits. You can’t move everything to the cloud in one shot. If you try to bring everything all at once, you might have some difficulty managing the significant changes within your organization.

Q: What advice do you give to SAP customers considering adopting cloud-based financial applications?

If uncomfortable with cloud, start small. Do a proof-of-concept (POC) in the areas of reporting, planning, or taxes to prove the value, then move other functions. If you’re a relatively less-complex organization, make sure the POC is big enough to drive real benefits and value.