Cloud ERP Playbook: A quick guide to an organization's ERP-on-Cloud journey

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is an application used by organizations to manage and integrate important parts of their businesses. Integrating and automating business processes over the cloud eliminates redundancies, improves accuracy, reduces total cost of ownership, enhances flexibility to scale and increases productivity. If your organization is planning to implement an ERP application-on-cloud, this is a perfect guide that will help you in your ERP-on-cloud journey.

The guide covers topics such as introduction to ERP Cloud, its value to the customer, benefits of cloud over on-premise ERP, and ERP market leaders.

1. What is ERP-on-cloud?

ERP-on-cloud is a cloud based end-to-end Software as a service (SaaS) system that helps organizations to integrate their internal processes such as Sales, Marketing, HR, Finance, Supply chain, etc. into a single system. This helps to ensure that the information used across the enterprise is normalized and based on common definitions and user experiences.

For instance, consider a company that builds trucks by procuring parts and components from multiple suppliers. It could use an ERP system to track the requisition and purchase of these goods and ensure that each component across the entire procure-to-pay process uses uniform data connected to enterprise workflows, business processes, reporting, and analytics. When ERP is properly deployed at this truck-manufacturing company, a component, for example, “steering wheel,” is uniformly identified by source, part name, size, material, serial number, and specification, along with a plethora of other descriptive and data-driven items.

2. What are the benefits of ERP-on-cloud?

No Upgrade Needed

Updates and new functionality are automatically distributed to your software. All that’s needed is an internet connection. This eliminates the potential cost down the road for system upgrades, thereby ensuring that your system is always updated.

Lower Upfront Cost

With ERP-on-Cloud, your subscription-based platform is run over the internet, lowering the initial costs needed to implement your new solution.

Scalability

One of ERP Cloud’s most noted benefits is its ability to grow with your business. Since the application being on the cloud helps organizations with business flexibility so that they can scale up whenever needed without worrying about cost of infrastructure upgrades or ownership.

State-of-the-art Security

Cloud ERP’s automatic deployment of updates ensures that your system is always up-to-date with the latest available security measures. Additionally, cloud data storage can be outsourced to a larger and more secure third-party, eliminating the cost of hardware and its maintenance.

3. Why should one move from on-premise ERP to ERP-on-cloud?

Moving to the cloud enables an organization to build on their ERP success and achieve even greater results with following benefits:

One comprehensive solution for your organization to optimize business operations and increase performance

Stay current with latest updates delivered automatically

Built-in intelligence for smarter work using the latest technologies including artificial intelligence and machine learning

Automation tools to automate functions and eliminate errors

Significantly Lower TCO of your IT infrastructure

Gradual elimination of legacy applications. According to Gartner, by 2020, nearly 60% of large enterprises with systems up for replacement will switch from traditional on-premises licenses to cloud deployments.

Faster time to market

4. ERP-on-cloud Market Leaders

Gartner has named Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP as a Leader in its 2021 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Core Financial Management Suites for Midsize, Large and Global Enterprises.

The other market leaders in the ERP-on-cloud spectrum are SAP, Microsoft, Infor for enterprises, and IFS, Epicor, Acumatica, Sage, and Salesforce for Small to Medium-sized organizations. Organizations can choose any of the above leaders to start their digital transformation journey and seamlessly migrate their existing on-premise ERP to the cloud.

Shrikant Navelkar, Director, Clover Infotech