Johannesburg, 08 Sep 2016
In the 21st century almost everything is moving to the cloud. There are, however, still individuals and companies with reservations about the big move - especially when it comes to financials.
Businesses have a wide variety of questions and concerns that make them shy away from taking the leap. Is my data safe? How complicated is the process? How will I be able to afford it?
With this in mind, ITWeb assembled a team of experts to address the most common concerns. Armin Moradi (AM), Oracle, senior territory manager, Financials - South Africa; Mandy
Leonard (ML), business development director at EOH Intellient; and Carl Janse van Rensburg (CJvR), operations director at EOH Intellient, participated in the discussion and shed some light on the processes, procedures and benefits of moving your financials into the cloud.
1. In layman's terms, define your understanding of "financials-in-the-cloud".
ML Financials-in-the-cloud offers customers the ability to have world-class financial applications for management reporting, budgeting and forecasting, without the capex infrastructure of on-premises solutions. Financial applications will be accessible via a Web browser. The initial set-up will be intuitive and easy to implement. Support will be accessible and available 24/7.
2. How do you allay fears about the cloud when approaching new clients, looking primarily at security, accessibility and convenience?
AM Security is the easiest one. No one can beat the 24/7 security teams of Oracle, who update patches worldwide if they need to. The encryption is owned by the customer and no one, not even Oracle, can see the data without the encryption key that the customer itself owns. Additionally, accessibility is as easy as accessing Facebook or Google. If you can use those two platforms, then you are able to access the cloud.
CJvR Expanding on the ownership of the encryption, it essentially makes it as safe - and in most cases safer - than employees working remotely on their companies on-premises applications.
3. What are the advantages for companies that move their financial/BI functionality into the cloud?
AM Predictable costing, long-term savings, constant updates of functionalities - it is the way of the future.
4. Smaller companies sometimes worry that cloud solutions are too 'enterprise-strength' for their needs. Is this necessarily true?
AM Not necessarily. The overriding benefit here is that you pay very little for a lot of power and functionality. It ensures you are covered when you grow or if your processes get more complicated. Many smaller companies don't see their true potential due to operational deficiencies, which cloud solutions can address.
5. How can individual lines of business (beyond the finance department) use cloud solutions to deliver on their business imperatives?
AM Oracle Planning, Budgeting Cloud Solution (PBCS), the simple version, is extensively used across departments such as marketing and IT to manage spend and calculate return on investment. Big winners in the USA are PBCS in sales departments for sales quote planning, as well as in supply chain and manufacturing, where it can be used as a volume planning tool.
6. Looking at time and cost saving, efficiency, efficacy, productivity, infrastructure, decentralisation, what are the benefits to moving to the cloud?
AM All of what you mentioned, but the simple answer is this is the future. You cannot stop development when the four largest IT vendors, which own 80% of the market share combined, are focusing more or less all their R&D on cloud. And if you wait until it is the norm, you will be left behind.
ML There are also no requirements for capex infrastructure, like there is with on-premises solutions. Moreover, operational (rather than capex) cost can be budgeted for on an annual basis, making financial planning so much easier. It must also be noted that the system includes intuitive, role-based Web and Microsoft Office interfaces, which results in a short learning curve, minimal IT resources, quick implementation and flexible deployments.
7. There may be some concern as to usability. How do you placate those who are technophobic and believe the transition process will be complicated and painful?
AM The Oracle cloud apps are very simple to use; they are designed to be self-learning.
CJvR Currently, all Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) financial applications are accessible via a Web browser or some form of Microsoft Office plug-in. It's the same for the Oracle cloud applications. From an end-user and administration point of view, nothing is different. The only difference is that the infrastructure is maintained by Oracle and not by the company's internal IT department. Most companies outsource their IT infrastructure to third parties anyway. This is exactly the same scenario. An additional benefit is that Oracle will maintain and update the applications where necessary, whereas most third party outsource partners lack in-depth EPM application skills.
8. Cost-wise, there may be concerns that the cloud is the exclusive domain of large corporates, with lots of money and technical know-how. What do you say to the small to medium companies that would like to get their business into the 21st century?
AM It is exactly the other way around. Smaller companies are basically getting a free finance option and can pay as they go. It must also be remembered that cloud requires fewer technical skills.
ML The costs for the cloud must be viewed holistically. Although the cost per user can be expensive, you need to consider that you no longer have costs for infrastructure, or resources to manage and support the infrastructure.
9. Are there any legislative or regulatory concerns (such as taxation or banking) that potential clients voice on a regular basis?
AM Not a single one. The system is 100% compliant with all regulatory rules - even POPI.
CJvR I agree with that and can confirm that Oracle EPM cloud applications adhere to all regulatory, legislative and POPI standards. This may not be the case for all cloud vendors, though.
10. Historically, bandwidth has been a concern for those wishing to adopt cloud solutions in South Africa. Is connectivity (bandwidth, stability, price) still a concern?
CJvR Bandwidth is becoming less of a concern in South Africa, with the introduction of fibre and LTE networks. There are many technologies available to increase connectivity without increasing the actual bandwidth. Most benchmarks done in the last year show that the performance of cloud vs remote connectivity to on-premises is about 1:1. In some cases, the cloud applications performed better than working remotely to on-premises applications. Oracle cloud applications run on engineered systems that are specifically designed for the applications. Due to pricing, engineered systems were previously only obtainable for larger customers, but cloud's scalability now gives smaller customers the benefit of these engineered systems at a fraction of the price.
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