Changing customer and employee expectations, disruptive technologies, a rapid and unique pace of change, and new, nimble digital business models all mean that organisations need to begin looking at strategies today that will help them prepare for tomorrow.

And at the forefront of this shifting landscape, particularly when it comes to finance, is the cloud. During the pandemic, the cloud was a business enabler for every company. And organisations that were well along their cloud journeys flourished, while those who weren’t struggled or even closed their doors.

Now, in the pandemic’s aftermath, savvy companies understand that the cloud is so much more than merely a technology — it is a destination for entities of every size to access their data and workloads, as well as game-changing applications and software via the Internet.

The bottom line is that the cloud enables innovation. It helps businesses rapidly to develop secure and scalable apps, support new products and services, and completely transform business operations. It also helps organisations collaborate more efficiently, both within the business and outside, anywhere and at any time.

A recent survey by AWCape in collaboration with Sage and TechCentral explored the variety of ways that the cloud can help businesses today with their financial operations, the problems it can address, as well as what is preventing certain firms from achieving their cloud objectives.

Efficiency drives business decisions

One thing is clear: migrating to the cloud has become critical. It allows organisations in every industry to modernise and future-ready their IT investments.

When asked which benefits they hoped to see from their cloud investments, nearly three-quarters of respondents to the survey (74%) cited more efficiency, followed by improved customer experience at 69% and enhanced security at 67%. Faster processing speeds were a factor for 65% of respondents, more agility for 58% and lowered costs for 56%.

For 50% of the respondents, quicker time-to-market for new services through leveraging cloud-based, agile DevOps approaches was a factor. The same number also cited breaking down silos and achieving greater operational efficiency.

The employee experience is king

While for many years it’s been all about improving the customer experience, savvy organisations are realising that employee experience is important, too. Strengthening the employee experience has a wide range of benefits that are all associated with employee job satisfaction, which leads to improved customer care, higher profits and better marketplace positioning.

This was clearly reflected in the answers to the question, “What are your top three most important outcomes from adopting cloud solutions?”, where improving the employee user experience came out top with 58%.

Next came “Improve integration of data and applications” with 54%, and another 53% hoped to reduce admin costs. Enabling agility and having a single view of the business were cited by 36%, and 35% hoped to lessen their dependence on IT.

Congratulations to Melissa Kamoran for taking the time to complete the survey – your insights were highly valued and you were the lucky winner of the R2 000 online shopping voucher.

If you would like to find out more on how to improve your organisation’s finance cloud operations and drive improved customer outcomes visit www.awcape.co.za.