12 Executive Views On Moving To The Cloud
Forbes journalists wanted to find out first-hand what is the general opinion on moving business data to the cloud. They asked 12 executive managers on how they feel about this change of approach in business.
These quotes provide insight into some benefits that add value to your products and services
“The biggest benefit of the cloud is the speed of implementation and deployment. We’re going live with 23 modules across supply chain and core financials this year. We’re going live in six countries. It’s completely revamping our commercial operations process and building in a ton of controllership and automation on the financial side. The scope is really big, and the deployment is really quick.”
―Sarah Alper, Head of Finance IT, GE Digital
“Integration was another component of our digital transformation…the ability to interact with the other applications in our portfolio, be they on-premises or other cloud applications. The interoperability and connectivity are things, from a technology perspective, that I enjoy because they save me time and money.”
―Gail Guillotte, Vice President of Enterprise Solutions, Ricoh Corp.
“So much of our infrastructure is older. We were paralyzed with out-of-date systems and too many custom-built integrations. We’re really focused on trying to leapfrog out of that, streamline the current processes, make them better, and get from being on our heels to leaning forward toward the future and improving customer engagement.”
―Gary Shatswell, Vice President of IT, Sur La Table
“A huge concern for us was the level of compliance that we must adhere to, both regulatory bodies like the FDA and government agencies like Health Canada. We wanted tools that could keep processes simple and still get us to the level of compliance we needed. We’ve always had a goal of getting to the cloud, but the tools fell short in terms of requirements, robustness, and compliance. Oracle came forward with a very robust, cost-effective, and scalable solution.”
―Steven Plymale, President and COO, Profound Medical
“The ROI of implementing the cloud for 11 countries paid for itself in terms of accounting fees, consolidation, and controls. We honestly believe that it would have cost about $3 million to do those 11 countries with Oracle on premises. We’ve reduced that cost by over a million dollars by deploying in the cloud. And the speed—we actually went live in eight months. On premises would have taken well over a year.”
―Robert Loreto, Senior Director IT, Qualcomm
“A key factor in moving to Oracle ERP Cloud was cost, but this point is really behind us. Today we talk about transformation of the company and no more about the cost.”
―Djamel Benallal, Head of Finance Group Solutions, Orange
“After we went live, I called my team and asked if we had done any customizations. They said no. And I called them again, because we had never implemented an application before that wasn’t customized. We are very pleased with the ability to move over from PeopleSoft and go live on Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud without any customizations, and not have to give up anything.”
―Rick Hassman, Vice President and CIO, Pella Corp.
“The approach that Oracle is taking with embedding security in the cloud proved to us that our security posture would be at least as good as, and probably better than, what we could build on premises. And that’s proven true. Moving to the cloud lets us use newer and more modern security techniques. We leverage SDN more effectively than in the past, with security zoning that creates a more secure environment all the way through development, test, and operation. We’re better off in the cloud than what we could engineer ourselves.”
―Scott Petty, Group Enterprise Technology Director, Vodafone
“It’s amazing how quickly Oracle can ramp up an environment—also how quickly we can deploy applications and roll them out. So our current ERP project is a three-year project in which we are rolling out the base ERP region by region, and filling in the gaps with cloud applications, which we’re able to deploy on an accelerated program. It’s not an IT project. It is a business project to transform our business and standardize our business practices across the whole US.”
―Dave Spaker, Vice President of IT Business Systems, Skanska
Multi-Device Access
“Mobile was one of our immediate benefits. We have 15,000 blue-collar employees in the US who never had access to our systems because they didn’t have a computer and weren’t on a network. Together with Oracle, we’ve achieved a very secure solution that these employees can use from their mobile device, iPhone, or laptop. Now they are fully integrated into the rest of our employee base. For the first time, they have access to self-service, which is a big opportunity for HR to engage with them more.”
―Margarita Gosheva, Vice President of IT, Siemens
“We bet on the cloud, and it works unbelievably well—especially the model of continuous improvements. Success managers from Oracle who started with us and have stayed with us are key, because as a midsize organization, we don’t have the staff or the resources. Our reliance on IT is minimal, because we’re cloud now.”
―Ed Saras, Senior Vice President, Total Rewards & HR Operations, Eastern Bank
“We had 20 different legal entities that we consolidated in Excel. Every single company was a separate general ledger. We were spending an insane amount of money on audit fees. We were ready to make the transition. Now, we have one source of data with Oracle ERP Cloud, which is the most important thing from my standpoint.”
―Peter Hovenier, CFO, Boingo Wireless
