Now more than ever, the Cloud is empowering enterprises by accelerating innovation, delivering business agility and reducing costs.
That’s why many believe Cloud infrastructure is a vital part of many transformation efforts.
Over the past decade the uptake of Cloud computing within Australian and New Zealand enterprises has focused on the adoption of Infrastructure-as-a-Service and to a lesser extent, the transition of customer-facing and office-productivity applications to the Cloud.
But now, organisations are discovering that they can gain even greater agility by moving their back-office systems to the Cloud.
“Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are some of the most important systems enterprises have - but they can be the greatest contributor to technology inertia,” says Phil Curtis, Enterprise ICT Sales Executive, UXC.
“From service delivery and human resources to marketing and sales, ERP systems run key business management functions.
“However, they are often large, complex and fragile, and adjusting them to fit your changing business needs can be a slow and expensive process.
“Organisations need to understand how to meet the needs of business change and gain the process agility needed.”
Curtis says that Cloud-hosted ERP offers a “faster and more responsive alternative”, letting organisations accommodate business-driven change more nimbly than they could with traditional ERP systems.
“The Cloud takes the inertia out of the equation so ERPs can move with the business,” he explains.
“When organisations move their ERP systems to the Cloud, they can free their in-house IT staff from the burden of ERP-based infrastructure maintenance.
“Cloud-based ERP services organisations have deep expertise to tap into and can provide systems management services. With this experience at their disposal, enterprises can rely on having consistently stable operations.
“And their own experts can focus on more strategic initiatives. In this way, moving ERP to the Cloud drives innovation and supports the business in responding rapidly to market challenges and opportunities.”
Curtis predicts, much like most industry analysts, that the use of cloud is expected to increase “fairly dramatically” over the next few years.
“With so many executives seeing the promise of the Cloud, in increased business agility, flexible capacity, and the ability to experiment and adopt new technology faster at a lower cost, the prospects for Cloud adoption look bright,” he adds.
“Early adopters already report gains in innovation and productivity while lowering costs and believe they’ve gained a competitive advantage.”
Curtis offers five key steps in moving ERP to the Cloud:
- Have a clear goal in mind
- Focus on key benefit areas
- Leverage the experience and expertise of others
- Try different paths (public, private, hybrid)
- Measure your success and adjust as you go
