One of the things I love the most about my job is that I get to help my clients find the best solutions to fit their needs. I think a lot of people say that, but in sales there is normally always a hidden agenda, a backend incentive to push one solution over the other. It’s rare to be in a position to simply educate your clients, show them options and then help them make a decision that truly is in their best interest, even if it’s not necessarily in yours.
I think Oracle’s Cloud offering falls into this category, because it might be the perfect fit for your business, or it might be all wrong, and unless you really understand what it can do and its impact on your business, you might make a decision that ends up being a little painful.
I recently spent several months going through this very process with a client. They are a small to mid-size manufacturing company with many integrations and a custom built system that manages a large portion of their process before it integrated into Oracle. They spent years developing this tool and their entire company relies on it. At first glance Cloud seemed to be a great replacement for this internal application, especially because the client also needed to upgrade their Oracle install to R12. Cloud is undeniably the wave of the future; the move will eventually be inevitable. No one knows precisely when that timeline will be, but we all know it’s coming. The future is staring us in the face, and it looks a lot like a Cloud.
So they were faced with two options:
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Do they move to Cloud now, long before they are ready and change all their processes, and as a result abandon their current system trying to adapt their business to Cloud’s standard installation?
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Or do they upgrade what they have to R12 and keep things the same, at least for the next few years?
Chances are it’s a question your business will eventually have to face as well. It’s basically this; do we do it now, or later? What makes the most sense for our business? What’s the ROI? What’s the impact? What’s the benefit?
I can assure you that from a user interface, Cloud is beautiful! Its functionality is beyond anything users have known in their on-premises solution. But is that enough? For many of my clients, it’s EXACTLY what they want and need. But for others the answer is, not yet. And that’s okay, because it’s not going to be the perfect solution for every business right now. And that’s what I love about doing what I do, helping you determine the answer to all of these questions.
Have you seen Cloud yet? What do you think of it?
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