Enabling organizational change with the cloud

How does migrating to a cloud ERP impact organizational change?

Our recent research discovered that a cloud ERP can enhance and enable all aspects of change within an organization. But which areas does it impact most, and how?

We recently teamed up with Computing research to look at how Cloud ERPs enable change, concerns organizations may have, and how organizations can find a path to success.

Cloud ERP Keeps Organizational Change Evangelists Happy

Our latest research has shown us that migrating ERPs to the cloud is usually part of a broader digital transformation across the organization. And when doing this, establishing the attitudes, expectations and accountability of key stakeholders is essential to your migration’s success.

This is usually because if your SaaS migration is part of a broader organizational change, you need executive support and sponsorship to make this happen. Cloud ERP’s result in a fundamental organizational change that advocates for change can get behind.

SaaS ERP’s Central Role in Enabling Change

How does cloud transformation move beyond enhancing broader organizational change to become the catalyst for it?

It is important to remember how central your ERP is to the larger cloud transformation your undertaking. Our research found that 80% of respondents thought migration to SaaS ERP should be a strategic part of a broader transformation in people and processes.

It also became clear from our research that, even though back-office applications often lag behind other business applications in priority for most organizations, SaaS ERP is clearly playing a significant role in overall cloud transformations. For many organizations, there is a symbiotic relationship between SaaS ERP and organizational change.

For the organizations we spoke to, we found an average rating of approximately 7.5 out of 10 for enhancing and enabling transformational change. This was unexpected, as the initial expectation was that SaaS ERP would enhance change but not necessarily enable it.

However, when you look at this finding in more depth, it makes more sense. This type of enablement seems intuitive, as your ERP’s importance as a catalyst in people and process cloud transformation is central to most organizations.

Your ERP’s central position within your business means migrating to a new ERP involves looking at processes and the tasks people undertake in all business areas. By migrating to a SaaS ERP, you enable your business to review processes, like purchasing cycles, and automate less valuable day-to-day tasks to free up time for more strategic activity.

The Clouds Single Data Source Gives Answers in Real-time

Reporting also benefits directly from SaaS ERP migration. Giving you a single source of data for the entire company, which enables real-time reporting. It also lets individual users set up their own self-service reporting functionality. Cloud ERP’s let you review and streamline processes. Removing data silos and internal barriers.

Combating concerns

Concerns about the impact cloud computing will have on a company’s work and culture have been around as long as the cloud itself. There’s also a level of discomfort about the greater role automation will play among senior employees. However, research Computing has undertaken in the past shows that re-skilling and training technical teams and end-users can help break through these barriers.

Though the other side of this is despite concerns about moving to the cloud, many organizations’ traditional legacy ERP systems that the SaaS solutions would replace aren’t always popular with the people using them. Users find them cumbersome and difficult to use, particularly when compared with the modern tools they use in their daily lives. Even those with better user experiences can fall foul of being too demanding on resources to maintain.

Where next?

All this means is that to make cloud migration happen, it becomes about getting past the natural human tendency to stick with what we know. But how do we get past this?

Well, for many organizations, when it comes to updating and modernizing their already unpopular and inadequate ERP systems, those in charge of implementing change are pushing at a door that’s already slightly open.