Cloud Technology Breaking the Barriers in Finance Departments

Designed to address the security, risk and compliance challenges, cloud computing technology has overcome much of the resistance in the overall finance sector. The key reasons financial department of the companies adopt the cloud computing technology are to enhance the business operation agility, upgrade the system, save the procurement cost, and to streamline the overall business procedure. Aforementioned benefits increase the scalability, elasticity and provide additional opportunities to achieve a greater balance between businesses needs and technology resources.

The most recent Ovum research shows that the investment of cloud computing has increased in the financial sector due to better and efficient cloud solutions and increase in the development of cloud applications.

According to the Cloud Reality Check research, companies plan to increase their cloud budget by 7% over the next three years (23 per cent to 30 per cent); accounting for nearly a third of their corporate IT budgets by 2018.

Many organizations offering cloud services have concurred an increase in the demand for cloud services for the financial work in the last 3 to 5 years. “Finance departments deal with some of the most critical information such as bank accounts, customer name and liabilities, and other such sensitive data. Any fissure in such sensitive information could be cataclysmic to the business and terrible for the customers. This makes companies rely on highly secure technological infrastructure,” says Karan Yaramada, CEO, Jade Global.

Companies can leverage the benefits of the cloud without any kind of security susceptibilities and violation of privacy. The complexity of cloud computing operations provides a greater degree of security. It does not matter if the hackers or cyber-criminal knows the cloud service provider for a particular financial institution, they would be required to know the exact data center to gain access. Even if they know about it, there is a significant amount of internal security resistance that needs to be breached. In contrast, the businesses, which store the key information on the in-house server are more prone to the security breach.

Over last decade, cloud computing technology has been positively imbibed by the financial departments; however, there are still few IT challenges that services providers must overcome to realize the full potential of the technology. Many organization still have a perception that using cloud services will result in instant improvement for business operations. Service providers must make the organizations realize that cloud services do not work like a magic wand, it experiences some strongly entrenched, extremely complex technological, budgetary and organizational challenges. One should understand that the benefits of cloud can be amassed over a period; hence, the organization should keep some patience and perception to move to the cloud computing technology. This practical method should likewise extend to choose the cloud service providers.

“Jade Global has been helping organizations implement systems that minimize departmental spend, increase productivity, reduce close cycles and result in more accurate reporting. Cloud financial applications are rapidly becoming the best way for the finance department to manage regulatory issues, efficiently execute daily, monthly and quarterly finance activities and analyze and report financial information in consumable formats,” Karan said.

Cloud services should not be looked at as an instant profit making way; rather it should be used as a technology that will digitally transform their business over time. It eventually helps the organization to build the digital DNA for higher business flexibility, speed and innovation-driven IT environment.