5 Compelling Reasons to Move Your ERP To Cloud. Today!

By Kunal Nagarkatti, Chief Operating Officer, Clover Infotech

The benefits of moving to the Cloud have been extensively written about. “Pay-as-you-use”, “CAPEX to OPEX model”, etc., are some of the buzzwords which advocate the move to Cloud for enterprises. Does it help to move business critical systems like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to the Cloud? Business readiness, trained personnel, the nature of reporting and compliance mandates, physical location of key personnel and resources, infrastructure costs, etc., are some of the factors that may influence this decision. While these are unique to businesses, there are a few compelling reasons which endorse the benefits of moving your ERP to the Cloud and getting the business future ready.

Kunal Nagarkatti, Chief Operating Officer, Clover Infotech

1. Catering to a ubiquitous workforce:

Companies no longer exist within four walls and cubicles. Their business extends beyond location and geographic boundaries. Key decision makers are often on the move. Access to important information is critical. Cloud-based ERPs are responsive and facilitate access from multiple devices including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. This enables key decision makers including CFOs to slice and dice data, run reports, and take informed decisions, even when they are on the move. This saves time, enhances efficiency and enables the company to align better and attain organizational goals.

2. Faster and Seamless Closure of Books:

ERP Clouds integrate well with existing legacy apps even if they are on premise. This helps the ERP to automate data collation and entry into the book of accounts. The finance team of the company can, thus, view and monitor the financial health because of real-time updates on key metrics such as cash flow, payables, receivables, etc., and generate financial performance dashboards.

3. Security and Risk Management:

Moving the ERP to the Cloud ensures that the company’s ERP will be in a highly safe and secure environment and hence the integrity of the information in the ERP will be safeguarded. Cloud ERPs also have pre-built tools and templates for companies to comply with international and domestic reporting standards. It also enables the risk management and compliance teams at companies to run reports and keep risk parameters in check.

4. Build and Innovate Faster:

While the ERP will be on Cloud and will be accessed live by company’s key personnel and managers, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) helps organizations to clone their development and production instances, test new scenarios, enhancements, customizations etc., on the cloud. This enables the research and innovation teams at companies to constantly enhance the features and value of ERP without impacting daily business operations.

5. Leverage Technology Advancements:

Cloud ERPs come with built-in capabilities to slice and dice data, analyse it, map and track it with historic trends, and visualize data in viewer-friendly formats to enable quick and informed decision making. The ERPs on Cloud can also benefit by leveraging machine learning. ERPs on Cloud can work well with machine learning algorithms to identify trends with respect to performance, patterns with respect to vendors, suppliers, payments, etc., and flag-off risks by using predictive analytics capabilities. Further, the ERPs on Cloud can seamlessly connect with mobility-based interfaces such as Chatbots and Voice-based virtual assistants to enable ease of usage of ERPs and quick access to dashboards, reports, and insights.

Moving ERP to the Cloud can generate better returns by channeling resources towards the core and critical business tasks. It can also optimize the infrastructure footprint and allied costs that companies incur for managing their on-premise ERPs. Furthermore, it can enable far better analysis of data, derive richer business insights and create a more agile and intelligent organization.