How to know when to migrate an ERP system to the cloud

2/16/2012 at 3:14 pm by The Sage ERP Team

The appeal of enterprise resource planning can linger on the minds of managers and supervisors for so long before being taken up and embraced. Companies that have experienced the growing pains associated with diversification and geographic spreading will sooner or later realize they're able to improve operations and become much more efficient if they use an ERP suite of applications.

However, some companies will find that they can take additional steps after implementation to improve themselves even further, and it involves cloud computing. When certain situations occur or red flags are raised, it may be time for businesses (particularly small and mid-sized ones) to pack their ERP bags and migrate to the cloud. Here are some warning signs to watch for that might indicate cloud ERP is in an enterprise's best interests.

Physical facilities
In the past, one of the most expensive parts of running a business was the technology involved in its daily operations. As such, managers carefully researched the available programs and devices to keep everything automated and running smoothly. Today, it can be argued that in some areas, physical space is even more costly and important to obtain. Consequently, companies that operate in crowded metropolitan areas might find that they'd rather have the room to operate rather than host large servers and complex devices. The cloud is the best way to alleviate this situation.

Company makeup
Traditional organizations are very carefully distributed geographically and in terms of the industries that they occupy, but more and more enterprises are finding themselves structured in non-traditional manners. For example, the ability to outsource certain types of functionality to other businesses has rendered many companies without IT or accounting departments but full of logistics staff members. If this is the case, it might be easier to subcontract yet another duty – the hosting of data in an enterprise resource planning system.

Fluid changes
Another interesting quality to the modern corporate world is the fact that businesses frequently update their products and services to keep up with an increasingly changing private sector. In the past few years, connectivity has exploded and made many old processes and patterns mostly obsolete. Don't let this happen – keep everything in the cloud to ensure that software is fully updated and programs contemporary to reflect the needs of clients and customers.