Why Cloud Matters to Treasury

Bob Stark, vice president of strategy, Kyriba, explains why cloud delivered SaaS solutions offer more value to CFOs and treasurers than ASP or installed systems.

Cloud technology is commonplace in virtually every aspect of our lives. And while cloud technology is becoming more prevalent in treasury solutions, treasury management systems have typically not been delivered in the cloud. This trend is starting to change as treasury technology providers realise that web-enabling older systems does not offer the same benefits as natively developed SaaS applications.

When solutions are fully delivered in the cloud, CFOs and treasurers stand to gain a range of benefits, including reduced costs, business continuity and better reliability, as well as simplified implementation and support requirements.

From a financial perspective, the costs involved in ‘buying’ SaaS software are less than the previous generation of systems, due to the monthly subscription model and choice of modules or functions now available to CFOs and treasurers. As such, only the required functionality need be selected, effectively transferring control of software costs to the user.

Similarly, there are no internal hardware or IT costs, while upgrade costs are also eliminated. This flexible model also serves to remove the dependency on IT, cutting costs for the company and generating an attractive ROI through IT savings alone.

Crucially for the business-critical finance department, cloud solutions invariably offer better disaster recovery and business continuity than installed or even application service provider (ASP) solutions. All clients utilise the same infrastructure, meaning that there is no longer a single point of failure that disrupts system availability.

The fact that shared technology resources are pooled also means that they can be dynamically assigned to optimise system performance. Full redundancy of the entire cloud environment in multiple locations also protects system availability from disruptive events, including natural disasters.

Download our Free Treasury App for mobile and tablet to read articles – no log in required.

Download Version Download Version