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Introduction: Why Companies are Migrating to a Cloud ERP Solutions like Oracle Financials Cloud (Oracle Cloud ERP)
Today, CIOs and technology decision-makers are seeing the obvious advantages of migrating to a cloud-based ERP solution.
Some of the key advantages of making the shift from on-premise ERP like Oracle E-Business Suite (Oracle EBS) to a solution like Oracle Cloud ERP include:
Scalability: One of the main advantages of a cloud ERP solution is scalability. With cloud ERP, businesses can easily adjust the number of users and the amount of storage they need, without having to invest in additional infrastructure. This means that as a business grows, it can easily accommodate new employees and customers without having to worry about running out of resources.
Easier in terms of Access: With cloud ERP, employees can access the system from anywhere, anytime as long as there is internet connectivity. This allows for greater collaboration and flexibility, as well as the ability to work remotely. This feature is becoming more important than ever in today’s environment where remote working has become way more common.
Security: A decade or so back, security was a concern when it came to moving important applications to the cloud. For instance, finance teams used to prefer an on-premise solution like Oracle EBS Financial Modules for maintaining data on General Ledger (GL), Accounts Payable (AP), Accounts Receivable (AR), Fixed Assets, and Cash Management. But that mindset has changed today.
With a solution like Oracle Fusion Cloud Financials, data security and data governance have become easier. Furthermore, cloud ERP providers are subject to strict regulations and compliance requirements, ensuring that your data is protected to the highest standards. While the jury is still out on this, there is a belief among CIOs that solutions like Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud are more defensible from cyber attacks than on-premise ERP solutions, thanks to a deep focus on cybersecurity by companies that offer cloud applications like Oracle.
Having said that, even as companies are modernizing and migrating to the cloud, they continue to maintain past records in the legacy ERP solution for audit and legal reasons. Enterprises in the Oracle ecosystem are using Oracle EBS for legacy data while migrating certain workloads to Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud.
In this post, we cover the following topics:
- How and why enterprises are continuing to use their legacy ERP solutions even after migrating to cloud-based ERP solutions?
- Popular ERP tools used by Finance Teams across Sectors
- Need for Secure Data Pipelines to Move Data from Multiple Sources
- Driving efficiency into the process of Financial Reporting
- The value of having pre-built analytics for financial data
- Why Enterprises picked Orbit for Financial Reporting
- Orbit – A Preferred Solution for Financial Reporting
- Why Better Financial Reporting results in Better Strategy
Why enterprises are continuing to use their legacy ERP solution even after migrating to a cloud-based ERP solution?
Several companies continue to use their on-premise ERP solution even after migrating to a cloud ERP for several reasons. One reason may be that they have invested a significant amount of time (and resources) into customizing and integrating their on-premise ERP system with other in-house systems and processes, and it can be difficult and costly to replicate these customizations and integrations in a cloud ERP system.
Additionally, some companies may have concerns about security and data privacy when using a cloud-based system and may prefer to keep sensitive data on-premise for additional control and compliance.
Another reason could be that their current on-premise ERP system still meets their needs and they don’t find the need to switch to cloud ERP.
For example, the manufacturing and production processes may be working well with Oracle EBS and there may not be a requirement to migrate. Having said that, solutions like Oracle Cloud ERP come with cutting-edge capabilities including better access to embedded analytics, AI-powered features, easier integration with IoT devices, etc.
From the perspective of finance teams, it is critical for them to generate reports and analytics from both legacy data and current data. They need a financial reporting solution that can bring in data from the legacy ERP, say Oracle EBS, and also real-time data from Oracle Cloud ERP.
Popular ERP tools used by Finance Teams across Sectors
The most popular ERP software used by finance teams include-
- Oracle Financials Cloud (Oracle Cloud ERP)
- Oracle E-Business Suite (Oracle EBS)
- SAP ERP
- Microsoft Dynamics 365
- Infor CloudSuite Financials
- Sage Intacct
- Workday Financial Management
According to CIO Magazine, while Oracle is currently the #2 player in the ERP market, the market potential for Oracle Fusion Cloud is phenomenal, and it is predicted to hit US $20 billion in revenues in the next four to five years. Oracle NetSuite ERP (Oracle acquired NetSuite in 2016) is also a strong player in the market.
But having an ERP solution alone is not enough. Finance leaders and decision-makers are looking to derive insights from data – by quickly bringing together data from different sources.
The Need for Secure Data Pipelines to Move Data from Multiple Data Sources
A solution like Oracle Cloud Financials serves as the primary hub for harmonizing all finance and accounting data. It serves as a “single source of financial truth” that your accounting, finance, and strategy teams rely on. Its key features and capabilities include easy access to payables and assets; receivables monitoring and tracking; revenue management; expense and cost tracking; seamless management of collections; and compliance and statutory reporting.
Having said that, just bringing in data from Oracle Financials Cloud is not enough from a financial reporting (and analytics perspective). You need world-class data pipelines to move data (from multiple ERPs, CRM, and other sources) to a central data warehouse for reporting and analytics.
In this blog, we talk about why Orbit’s Data Pipelines for Oracle Cloud Applications are ideal for Integrating Data from Oracle Cloud Financials and other data sources including Oracle EBS:
Driving Efficiency into the process of Financial Reporting
Financial reporting and analytics empower decision-makers with insights into their financial activities and performance on a periodic basis. With financial reports, companies can organize their accounting data, assess the current financial status, forecast future profitability, and project growth. They want to have a financial reporting solution that makes it easy to track cash flows, profitability, and revenue growth. It must also enable leaders to slice and dice financial data by geography or business unit.
Financial leaders are also looking to drill down into several layers to access and analyze underlying data.
The key features of world-class financial reporting software include:
- Easy to generate a wide range of financial reports
- Real-time Account Analysis must be intuitive and quick
- Accelerate Period Closing Reporting work
- Easy Drill Down capabilities
- Integrate data from multiple ERPs and data sources with proven data pipelines
- Have pre-built reports
- Have the ability to generate pre-built analytics
- Import FSGs with ease
In this blog titled ‘7 Reasons Why Orbit is the Best Financial Reporting Solution for Oracle EBS’ we go in-depth into all features of Orbit. The same capabilities are also available for Financial Reporting from Oracle Cloud Fusion.
The value of having pre-built analytics for financial data
Finance teams are looking for a financial reporting and analytics tool that offers pre-built analytics from data residing in the following ERP modules:
- Accounts Payable
- Accounts Receivable
- Fixed Assets
- Cash Management
- General Ledger
- Projects
- Grants
- Purchasing
- Inventory Management
- CRM
Broadly speaking, leaders in finance are typically looking for analytics that can help them make better business decisions, identify new opportunities for growth, and manage risks. This may include
- Analytics to understand historical data and trends to identify patterns and insights that can inform future decisions.
- Visualization tools to make it easier to understand and communicate complex data.
In addition to these technical capabilities, finance leaders also value analytics that is easily accessible, user-friendly, and can be integrated with other systems and data sources.
Why Enterprises use Orbit for its financial reporting and analytics
There are several reasons why Enterprises use Orbit for its financial reporting and analytics, But the top 3 reasons are:
- Orbit’s Self-Service capabilities, where finance users don’t have to rely on IT teams to generate reports or access insights
- Ease of integration with both Oracle Fusion and Oracle EBS, because there was often a need to run a comparative analysis with both legacy and latest data
- The ability to do financial reporting from within Excel using Orbit’s GLSense
With GL Sense, business users will benefit from its capabilities such as:
- Allowing users to build their own financial statements (FSG) in Excel
- Directly integrating Excel with Oracle Fusion to build financial statements and expedite reconciliation and close processes
- Allowing complete drill-down from balances to sub-ledger
- Providing several pre-built reports
- Enabling fast and easy distribution of financial reports without switching between applications
- Facilitating ad hoc general ledger account analysis to let users ensure that transactions are posted to the right GL account
- Sharing financial reports and ad hoc analysis directly from within Excel for faster “time-to-insight” and better-informed financial decisions
Orbit: A Prefered Solution for Oracle Cloud Financial Reporting for Finance Users
Orbit’s GLSense is a wonderful alternative to GL Wand, a tool that is popular with finance teams that use Oracle EBS. Other popular options include –
- Oracle’s own in-built reporting tools
- SmartView
- Oracle BI Publisher
- OTBI
In this blog, we explain why Orbit has become a preferred solution for Financial Reporting.
In today’s era, as customers migrate to Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, they are looking for an easy-to-use, modern Excel-based Financial Reporting tool. They want a solution for real-time account analysis and the ability to create reports by blending both legacy EBS data and Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP data. This is extremely important from the perspective of running comparative analysis and spotting trends.
Orbit’s GLSense is a next-generation solution with the following features:
- The ability to produce live financial reports with the convenience of Excel, and at the same time control the complexity and risk that comes from managing spreadsheets
- Real-Time accounting analysis, including the ability to perform ad hoc GL Account Analysis for auditing and make sure transactions are posted to the right GL accounts during period end reconciliations
- Intuitive drill-down experience within Excel with real-time data
- The possibility for Legacy EBS and Fusion Cloud ERP Financial Reporting from the same tool
- Use the same data security setups as Oracle Cloud ERP within Orbit
- Faster Period Closing
- Seamless ERP integrations
- Ease of Migration to Orbit
- Reduced time-to-insights, thanks to pre-built analytics
For more information, visit: https://www.orbitanalytics.com/financial-reporting-oracle-cloud-excel-financial-reporting-with-orbit-glsense/
Better Financial Reporting = Better Strategic Decision Making
In today’s world, the finance department is playing a critical role in driving insights from enterprise-wide data analytics. CFOs and finance leaders are not just managing “finance departments” anymore. They are playing a crucial role in aiding decision-making, both strategic and operational, that involves data from across the enterprise.
At one of Orbit’s customers, the CFO and the finance department led a customer analytics initiative. The key objective was to drill down into customer data and look for patterns based on analyzing revenue from rentals for a range of locations, facilities, and apartment sizes. They also wanted to analyze the contribution from commercial and retail rental, as compared with housing rental income. Traditionally, this process would have been led by the business unit head with support from IT. But, with the power of self-serve data analytics, the finance team was able to general insights into revenue split and the key drivers of growth for multiple offerings.
While all financial reports resided in Oracle Fusion, the finance department was able to drill down (to multiple levels) using Orbit’s GLSense Excel add-in, making it easier to conduct analysis.
The finance department is now able to play a critical role in driving efficiency into several areas including procurement, sales, and marketing (price analytics, revenue driver analysis, churn analysis, etc.), technology (IT investment planning and forecasting and budgeting), and HR (business growth vs. payroll costs). Overall, the finance department is able to collaborate with various business units or functional heads as a “strategic partner”.
In short, modern financial reporting is all about having an impact on overall business performance. Orbit makes this happen!
