Making the Case for Cloud-Based EPM Solutions
Enterprise performance management (EPM) software is one of the best modern methods of using financial data to power and enhance strategic decision-making and scenario planning at your business.
If you want to build a successful company and invest in sustained growth, you can’t afford to make decisions based on only current business and economic circumstances. You need to be able to think ahead and plan for the future—and EPM software is an integral tool in this process.
Early iterations of EPM software leaned heavily toward on-premise solutions that could integrate with different third-party solutions as needed, creating greater ownership of the software—as well as much higher management costs and IT demands. Today, businesses are rapidly moving away from this legacy approach and embracing business-friendly, cloud-based EPM solutions.
The benefits span a wide range of considerations, from financial to IT to increased agility for your company. Here’s a look at the top factors convincing businesses to switch over to cloud-based EPM solutions.
Better Data Transparency Across the Organization
Compared to legacy software, cloud-based EPM solutions are designed to offer greater flexibility when integrating with other business software programs. This results in better data visibility across all solutions and departments in your organization.
Financial data can be used to enhance EPM capabilities, which combine with business intelligence to offer more insightful and useful guidance in strategic decision-making for your organization.
This easy access to data raises the ceiling for what’s possible with EPM analytics. Drill-down capabilities increase your analytics power compared to what’s possible without a built-in analytics dashboard that has unrestricted access to financial data across every department. Some EPM solutions also offer rich data visualization tools to help you generate reports and distill complex financial data into easy-to-read illustrations.
Much Faster Time to Value
Implementing new software solutions can offer a lot of promise, but the onboarding and adjustment period also brings an added cost to your organization. Setup brings an added expense, technical complications can impede productivity, and staff onboarding and training will be necessary to get everyone up to speed on how to best use the EPM solution—not to mention the time it will take for those professionals to get comfortable with the solution.
You can minimize training and onboarding costs by adopting software solutions that offer more intuitive tools and require less technical knowledge. This is more commonly found with newer cloud-based solutions that prioritize the software’s UI. But cloud-based solutions also offer an easier setup and installation process, and they typically involve fewer disruptions and complications when you bring them into your existing tech stack.
Cloud-based software enables a faster implementation and launch, getting your organization up to speed faster than a legacy solution.
Fully Scalable Solutions
Looking for technology that leaves room for growth? Cloud-based solutions offer this as one of their greatest strengths. When you opt for a cloud-based EPM solution, you get the benefit of a fully scalable solution that doesn’t compromise on security as it scales to suit your needs.
This scalability also gives you mobile access, providing the flexibility your organization needs to optimize its use of the EPM solution. And over time, as your organization evolves, you’ll experience fewer growing pains by having scalable technology that can evolve with you, rather than being so rigid that your organization finds itself in need of a new solution.
Customizable Application Packages
A good EPM solution will offer a suite of tools to support the full spectrum of enterprise performance management activities. This includes built-in applications that support financial planning and analysis. Your organization should look for a cloud-based EPM solution that can support core FP&A processes, as well as the ability to incorporate other applications to create a suite of tools that is tailored to your company’s needs, with options to change the configuration of this application package if needs change in the future.
More Efficient Collaboration
Increased productivity is a product of improved internal operations. A cloud-based EPM solution offers built-in collaboration tools to support communication, as well as task and resource management, improving your capabilities when it comes to financial planning and other strategic decisions.
Cloud-based solutions also improve accessibility, which helps your team members access data, communications, and other internal assets when they’re out of the office. As mobile workforces become more commonplace, cloud-based business solutions offer an inherent advantage when your business is trying to become more agile and future-focused.
Streamlined Planning Cycles
Efficient workflow management is predicated upon efficient planning cycles that can be accelerated to improve an organization’s responsiveness and ability to accurately execute the planning process. A cloud-based EPM solution allows these various tasks and processes to be unified and organized alongside one another in an easy-to-use framework.
With streamlined, organized planning cycles being managed through EPM software, these cycles don’t just operate on an accelerated timeline—they also become more predictable, thanks to more reliable data and a better grasp on workflow processes. Withmore reliable planning and faster activities, you can improve your planning for different business scenarios and improve your company’s strategic decision-making.
Empowered Finance Teams, Reduced IT Dependence
Cloud-based EPM solutions typically offer a more user-friendly interface, as well as enhanced customization features that allow finance departments to manage and modify these financial platforms as needed.
By having the ability to make software customizations and changes on its own, your team isn’t bound to the schedule and priorities of your company’s IT department. This allows platform changes to take place quickly, speeding up productivity and eliminating frustrating downtime and bottlenecks that develop when your department is stuck waiting on technical help to modify the EPM platform.
If serious technical issues develop, IT is still there to help. But smaller maintenance tasks can be managed within your department, enabling more efficient business practices.
Lower Total Cost of Ownership
The total cost of ownership for software involves not just the initial acquisition cost, but also the ongoing maintenance needs, the life span of the solution, and any additional licensing required in association with that solution. In general, cloud-based solutions offer significant savings over legacy software, thanks to cheaper implementation and easier maintenance that can be handled, in most cases, without the involvement of IT.
With a lower total cost of ownership, it’s easier for your department to advocate for a cloud-based EPM solution by pointing to the long-term savings and cost efficiencies that such an upgrade would offer. Although business decision makers may recoil at the thought of an added expense, your department can emphasize the potential savings—especially when those savings are compounded by increased productivity and improved business results.
What’s next?
When it comes to choosing software for your business, it’s hard to overstate the value of adopting a business solution that can grow and evolve with the times. Legacy solutions are inherently more rigid, and these limitations can become more glaring over time. But a cloud-based solution has far fewer restrictions to grapple with, and this gives them greater possibilities when it comes to adding new tools and features, enhancing existing offerings, and continuing to keep the platform on the cutting edge.