Finance, both as an industry and as a department within businesses, has been slow to move to the cloud. This piece continues our discussion (see Part 1) of what’s holding financial pros back and why it’s worth it to make the transition.

• 15 Reasons Cloud Makes Sense for Finance Departments (cont.)
• Lower Your Risk with a Slower Transition

15 Reasons Cloud Makes Sense for Finance Departments (cont.)

Wise Development

5. International readiness – If you plan to find customers and otherwise operate in other countries, finances will become more sophisticated, as will compliance. That means you have to keep updating your current system. Cloud systems are updated on-the-go, by the cloud provider.
6. Smoother M & A – Computing is the most expensive part of merging with or acquiring another company. On the other hand, it can create points of integration as well. “The heavy reliance on ERP for business operations, management information, and financial reporting make it a priority item in the M&A agenda,” explains Forbes.
7. Testing a different market – When you go into a different market, you find a different type of customer. Cloud allows you to easily customize the back-end support to meet diverse needs.
8. Hypergrowth – When you are growing incredibly fast, as occurs during the hypergrowth phase of startups, you need your system to be able to scale with you. That’s cloud. It also allows you to efficiently use your resources for peaks and valleys. Moreover, if you have been wondering whether your small business needs CFO services and want to opt for one, having all your financial data on the cloud can help you and the outsourced service provider to manage things much more efficiently. Tasks such as cash flow management, reporting accuracy, establishing risks, plannings assets and capital purchases, etc., can be handled and recorded online on the cloud, accessed by only permitted people. So, a good option for small businesses expecting or seeing hypergrowth of their brand.
9. IPO – Are you about to become publicly traded? If you choose a strong cloud provider, they will have all the parameters in place to be compliant with financial regulations.

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Efficient Use of Resources

10. Divisional planning – To get back to the issue of standardization, what about divisional offices or subsidiaries that aren’t running the same ERP? “This disrupts the flow of data and necessitates manual workarounds such as spreadsheets,” notes Forbes. “Consolidating on the cloud can provide a single view of operations without the cost and lengthy implementations that inhibit on-premises ERP.”
11. Skipping upgrades – Upgrading ERP systems is costly and can be a huge undertaking. You can transition to cloud faster and more affordably.
12. Sharing services – Many organizations want to look for ways to simplify and streamline by unifying tasks that are unnecessarily performed through multiple departments. So. it’s much easier to achieve pain-free shared financial services via the cloud, especially if you have hired a financial advisor for your business. Since all the data is on the cloud, the financer that you might have appointed from a company like financialadvisers.co.uk can access it anytime to provide you assistance to manage business money, increase profits, prepare for future developments, and understand different stages of business growth.
13. Standardization throughout the company – If you have more than one ERP system in place now, cloud allows you to consolidate within an environment that is built to meet strict compliance guidelines. This can prove to be quite beneficial for big enterprises.
14. No on-site server or data center costs – Often businesses have to opt for sophisticated accounting programs from firms like Kruze as they expand. However, some businesses set up their enterprise resource planning as a cloud service, so they don’t have to buy equipment and hire IT support staff.
15. Safer operations – Many people in financial departments are so concerned about the idea of someone else hosting their data that they don’t move to cloud. Ironically, though, cloud is typically the safest possible hands – especially because the providers are so obsessed with security for the sake of their own credibility. “The cloud providers are much better at systemic security services, such as looking out for attacks using pattern matching technology and even AI systems,” says David Linthicum of InfoWorld. “This combination means they have very secure systems.”

Lower Your Risk with a Slower Transition

There are fifteen basic reasons why cloud could be a great choice for any finance department. However, people are still standing their ground. Finance is mission-critical. Errors can become systemic. Finance executives sometimes decide not to go to the cloud to avoid huge headaches.

Keep in mind, cloud is by no means an “all or nothing” proposition. You can switch over your finances in smaller pieces if you want to test the waters. Some organizations that have an international presence now have the finances of one of their global offices in the cloud as they decide on the full organization. Some firms just decide that they may want to have their primary ERP software hosted on-site with the help of a software company like Finlyte. Those companies “can move some independent finance applications to the cloud, such as planning and budgeting, narrative reporting, financial reporting compliance, and more,” says Forbes.

If you do decide to switch everything over, it won’t take as long as it does to replace the on-site system. The entire process can often be completed in 10 weeks.

Given all the above information, does waiting to move to the cloud really make sense for finance departments? We think not.