The digital age is radically reshaping the Retail Industry.

As the market continues to grow with disruptive innovation, the roles of CFOs are increasing to stay relevant. Deep insights using big data and sophisticated AI/Machine Learning algorithms are providing tremendous opportunities. Under the influence of these dynamics, the scope of work is getting increased beyond passive control of numbers, revenues, and expenditures. The need of the hour is to move to a reliable Cloud solution like Oracle Financial Cloud. Before we start talking about Oracle ERP – Finance on the cloud, let’s have a look at the major challenges faced by CFOs.

Key challenges for CFOs in the digital age:

1. The detail and accurate insights

As stated in the 2017 CFO research survey, many senior finance executives determined that the technology they use for their finance functions is inefficient for coherent decision making.

A perfect and timely report on the financial insights of an organization unearths big opportunities that constantly lead to success.

2. Managing cybersecurity

Cyber-attacks are becoming more frequent and targeted in the digital age, this brings substantial impact to the customers’ trust. So, CFOs should stay up to date with the latest risks and solutions.

3. On-premise ERP solutions as a legacy application

SaaS ERP solutions are maturing so fast that the on-premise solutions are viewed as legacy applications. Rapid changes in the life cycle of newer technologies and traditional investments need to be depreciated with more amortization periods.

To manage all these challenges, the technology used must be agile and should meet all the changes happening in the fast-growing market. Many retail finance professionals are migrating to Oracle ERP Cloud – Financial solutions that potentially provide a comprehensive result for their companies’ digital expansion.

According to Gartner, by 2020, nearly 60% of large enterprises will switch from on-premise licenses to cloud deployments.

Benefits of modern cloud-based ERP solutions:

1. Faster Implementation

The technical environment for the cloud can be configured faster when compared to on-premise. It gives more time for an organization to focus on the business transformation.

2. Focus on your core competency

Data-rich and insight-driven approach bring market differentiation to gain competitive advantage.

3. Using advanced technologies

Working over the cloud helps an enterprise to access and use new-age technologies for bringing profound changes in the finance function.

4. Robust security resources

Cloud solution service providers have 24 hours of monitoring teams that are actively looking to identify and rectify security threats.

5. Lower IT costs

IT team in an enterprise should devote their time to innovation and R&D than on hardware and application maintenance. The need for customers buying, deploying and maintaining IT infrastructure gets eliminated by using cloud computing. As compatibility and upgrades are taken care by the cloud service provider, organizations get the advantage of the latest features and innovations of an application.

6. Scalability

As you pay only for what you use, cloud technologies offer greater flexibility and high scalability. This helps an organization to avoid disruptive migrations for optimizing the overall efficiency of the system.

Conclusion:

As the business grows at a tremendous rate, its planning and execution should mature along. CFOs being arbiters must be flexible and quickly adapt to the changing business environments. Oracle ERP Financials Cloud enables CFOs to be agile and adapt to the changing times. Oracle Financials Cloud is the most comprehensive, integrated, and scalable financial management solution that significantly eliminates complications and ensures efficient business processes.