During a panel session at the Virtual Accounting and Finance Show held in September 2021, key opinion leaders from different industries shared their thoughts on moving business functions to the cloud.
“Ready or not, companies are likely to be pushed towards adopting the cloud and are much better off embracing this rather than fighting it,” said Sean Edward Cheah, Executive Director of the Malaysian International Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MICCI).
As the global economy begins to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for companies to shift towards the cloud has only become more urgent. Remote work-from-home setups have forced companies to pivot by using collaborative tools – many of which are based in the cloud.
“Many organizations are moving towards the shared resources provided by cloud platforms, which are very flexible and provide unlimited scalability. They are highly reliable and offer these companies their many benefits at a lower cost and with minimum maintenance compared to traditional software,” said Rajat Gupta, Director of Angel Services.
Access to data is always limited when it comes to on-premise servers.
With the pandemic, remote work has become the new way of doing business, and companies can no longer afford to have their access limited due to mobility issues.
Companies can be just as effective if they move their solution to the cloud and give employees access to work anywhere.
Sandra Blankson, Financial Controller at Luther Corporate Services, explains, “Moving our software to the cloud made it much easier for us to have an uninterrupted business flow. Most of our providers use mobile apps, making it easy for busy people, including our lawyers, to work on their phones even as they travel.”
With easy remote access to the cloud and documents, employees can complete their tasks and responsibilities much more efficiently, saving time and costs for your company.
Instead of constantly requesting access from a colleague or superior, employees can quickly find the information they need to get started. This creates unparalleled efficiency for your business and eventually increases its profitability.
Repetitive, manual tasks take up a tremendous amount of time and can be detrimental to employee productivity, motivation, and your company’s profitability in the long run. Adopting the cloud can help a business reduce the need for these manual tasks, freeing up employee time for other, more valuable tasks.
Luther Corporate Services reduced its manual work by 85% within the accounting team by moving software to the cloud.
“It increased our efficiency, and now we can have timely reports for any kind of purpose at any point in time,” added Sandra.
The ability to adapt and add new features to software or integrate with other software is crucial to ensure that technology keeps up with your company’s needs.
As your company grows, the needs of any company are likely to change. When software does not provide room for integration or add-on features, your company’s growth will likely be hampered, which keeps companies stagnant.
“When our company switched to Xero, our new accounting software, we realized that it didn’t have all the features we needed. We then searched for suitable software which we could integrate into Xero,” said Sandra.
Doing so allowed their law firm to create a whole system based on their needs rather than a fixed system involving a huge first implementation cost.
She adds that this is one of the many benefits of moving to the cloud – to stay on top of market trends and your business’s ever-changing needs.
Today’s workforce looks vastly different from the workforce of just ten years ago. Companies now empower employees to make decisions at every level, with minimal interference or red tape in the way. With the cloud, these companies can decentralize authority to delegate more to everyday employees.
“The need for speed is real in today’s business. You need to be faster, and it’s hard to do that if employees at the ground level don’t have the authority to make decisions – including decisions for spending,” Ruddy Wang, Chief Operating Officer at Spenmo.
However, he added that this creates tension between the traditional role and this new finance department model, which has always been centralized.
Finance leaders must reconcile between controlling and tracking corporate spending while providing employees with ample spending power to make decisions, which a cloud-based platform can address.
For example, Spenmo provides employees with virtual cards with spending limits controlled by management and finance. Having such features allow employees to procure software for their departments more seamlessly, all with permissions provided by management.
Through the cloud payments software, management can easily oversee spending through a centralized dashboard which is instantly updated when employees make transactions or spending requests.
With so many benefits to reap, it is becoming clear that businesses who proactively make the shift towards the cloud are likely to grow at the fastest rates – at the lowest costs.
Employees are likely to become more productive, motivated, and empowered with the expanded ability to make decisions seamlessly through cloud software.
Ready to explore all that cloud payments software has to offer your business? Try Spenmo’s cloud payment software and sign-up for free today!