Talking Tech: Top 6 Considerations for Modernizing Your Financial Systems

While there are many pros and cons to both cloud and on-premise solutions, your organization may have requirements that will drive your decision in a clearly defined direction based on internal policy. You may also want to consider the ROI of a user based licensing vs. “module” based licensing.

Next generation systems can cover more than just the FP&A or corporate finance team – but who can and will leverage it in your organization (Finance, Sales, HR, Supply Chain, Accounting, etc.)?

Is the solution able to grow with your business? While many companies may not think their business will change, it happens more often than not in some capacity. It’s imperative when choosing a solution that you understand the scalability of the software and if possible, have the vendor thoroughly explain or even demonstrate how the software can adapt to real-world change. Scalability can also mean different things – do you need to dive deep into SKU level forecasting (vertical scaling) or cover a number of different business unit specific processes (horizontal scaling)?

Is the solution agile enough to change quickly if necessary? We’ve seen numerous instances where a business drastically changes its dimensional structure or implements new processes and needs their planning & reporting tools to do the same. It can be difficult and slow to implement major foundational changes in short order, which makes vetting the flexibility of the software a critical component in your selection process.

Identifying the true cost of ownership is more than just the cost of your subscription/licensing fees. We must take the full scope of everything that goes into owning a solution into consideration when we determine the true cost of ownership. Some of these costs may be obvious, such as hardware expense for an on-premise solution, but there are other, not so obvious costs. We cannot forget maintenance (hardware and software), internal training expenses, and who will handle future modifications, either internal or third party.

Support is frequently put on the back burner as a top priority. But what happens when the implementation is complete, and the team is no longer dedicated to your project? Understanding the software vendor’s support model, response times and what they actually consider support items must be clearly defined.