Unlock your agility with cloud-native applications

The pandemic underscored the need for organizations of all sizes to be able to adapt quickly to changing employee and customer needs. This post will discuss why a cloud-native approach to financial management and other back-office systems maximizes flexibility for changing conditions and helps businesses innovate and scale more quickly.  

In this article, we cover:

1. How to find your edge in the cloud
2. Why there’s flexibility in the cloud
3. How flexibility and scalability lead to more silver linings
4. How integration creates 360-degree functionality

Find your edge in the cloud

In an age of technological innovation, cost pressures, and demanding customers, cloud-native finance applications can give your company the edge. In a global Capgemini survey of banking leaders, 88% said cloud-native applications improved their organizations’ agility, and 84% said they helped increase revenue and cut operating costs.

“It’s more important than ever for companies to be nimble and flexible,” says Scott Freedman, director of marketing for Sage Intacct. “Cloud-native applications provide that capability, regardless of demand.”

Flexibility in the cloud

Cloud-native apps should be part of your cloud migration strategy. The global pandemic accelerated cloud-migration plans, underscoring the need to adapt quickly as employee and customer needs changed. Foundry’s 2021 Digital Business study found that 86% of small or midsize companies have adopted or plan to adopt a digital-first approach to business processes, operations, and customer engagement.

But the transition hasn’t gone smoothly for everyone. Around 22% of survey respondents said their company’s legacy systems were not integrated with new applications, hampering digital transformation efforts. And 23% said their digital and business strategies were not aligned.

Part of the challenge comes from the type of cloud migration path you can choose. Moving to cloud-enabled versions of traditional on-premises applications provides some benefits. But this “lift and shift” approach with financial systems can also expose the limitations of applications that weren’t designed to handle today’s complex, distributed, and scalable environments.

“Demands on the system can lower speed and prevent your users from interacting smoothly with product features,” explains Freedman.

Cloud-native applications, by comparison, are built from the ground up to take advantage of cloud functionality, flexibility, and scale. “Workloads can be shifted to different servers without disruption or information loss, providing a better customer experience,” says Freedman.

Flexibility and scalability lead more silver linings

It’s not just customers who benefit. Your financial team can better handle surges in demand, not only during monthly closes, but when the business makes other changes like acquiring a new company. Cloud-native applications also increase security and compliance. Built for automation, they can deliver bug fixes and security patches faster, plugging the holes hackers are eager to exploit.

They’re better able to keep up with changing financial-compliance requirements, keeping your company out of trouble, and creating a clear and objective audit trail.

Integration for 360-degree functionality

Where cloud-native applications really shine is with their integration capabilities. To gain deeper insights about your operations and develop new capabilities, you can connect your internal financial applications and tie business processes to partner services.

Using software containers, your developers can seamlessly connect those internal processes with partner applications, creating an ecosystem of microservices that can enhance productivity for teams and introduce new product features to customers.

Containers also enable improvements to discrete processes. Billing or payments no longer need re-engineering a long chain of dependencies, as they would have to do with a monolithic on-premises application.

Explore true business flexibility and find out how Sage Intacct can improve your business productivity and keep your business safe in the cloud, come rain or shine.