Business Transformation in the Cloud Era

The need to deploynew functionality across the enterprise has never been more urgent.Whether the requirement is to transform internal business processes, improve interactions with customers, empower employees, or manage a more efficient supply chain, business decision makers across the global economy are being tasked with choosing and implementing new software and services at an unprecedented rate.

The enthusiasm for meeting the needs of a transforming global economy, however,is often tempered with a host of practical concerns. Whilefor the most partthe path to transformation liesin the cloud and in the servicesthatcloud platforms can provide, many companies are concerned with the complexity of movingor upgradingfrom an on-premisesto a cloud infrastructure. Simultaneously, other companies are struggling to understand how to match their specific business requirements to the different cloudvendors’ services and their deployment and operations models.

One of the reasons for this disconnect is that decision makers often fail to take a broad enough view of what is needed to move their companies forward. Many look at their choices as a matter of acquiring next generation functionality in individual domains such as ERP, CRM and HCM, with the goal ofdoing the same things faster, better, and cheaper.It’s a worthyset of goals, albeit one that can also be self-limiting.The reason is that while transforming a business can’t happen without moving forward in these individual domains, transforming in the 21stcentury also requires a mix of new and improved business processes running on a modern infrastructure that is itself adaptable to change.These new processes need to be a mix of best practices and business-specific functionality optimized by the cloud infrastructure they run on. Indeed, the ability to use the cloud and the advanced processes, services,and technologies the cloud can providebecomes as important as the improvements in the functionality of any individual domain.

This means that understanding the interplay between business processes, software and the cloud is more important than ever before; and understanding which vendor can best put these three elements to work moving a company forward to meet its specific requirements is the only way to overcome misgivingsabout how, when, and why implementing in the cloud, whether as an upgrade or via a net-new, greenfield implementation, is the best way forward.

This report will look at how an understanding of Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations offering, when combined with the company’s Azure cloud services, Office 365 productivity software, Power BI analytics, and other technology and services, can help drive successful transformations and provide a broader and more meaningful justification for moving to the cloud.