Why the cloud is essential for supply chain resilience

The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic dis­rupt­ed glob­al sup­ply chains with stun­ning swift­ness. But some busi­ness­es were able to with­stand this once-in-a-life­time event bet­ter than oth­ers – and many of them shared some com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics.

First­ly, they were flex­i­ble. Sec­ond­ly, they were agile. And third­ly, they had great part­ners work­ing with them. But with­out the cloud, none of this would have been pos­si­ble.

When it came to quick­ly piv­ot­ing oper­a­tions to hybrid work, new sup­pli­ers, online orders or con­tact­less deliv­ery, for exam­ple, “cloud appli­ca­tions proved faster to get start­ed, sup­port­ed more inno­va­tions, and kept busi­ness­es run­ning,” says Ker­rie Jor­dan, direc­tor of prod­uct man­age­ment for cloud solu­tions at Epi­cor, which pro­vides mar­ket-lead­ing cloud-based ERP sys­tems.

In the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic, some busi­ness­es had to nav­i­gate both the clo­sure of in-store sales chan­nels and surg­ing ecom­merce demand. But thanks to the flex­i­bil­i­ty and scal­a­bil­i­ty of cloud solu­tions, many were able to man­age this sud­den, rapid growth in online sales with­out major dis­rup­tion.

How­ev­er, the ben­e­fits of cloud solu­tions are game-chang­ing no mat­ter what the eco­nom­ic land­scape looks like. “Instead of spend­ing the resources to find safe and ade­quate space for servers, or the qual­i­fied per­son­nel to main­tain and secure them, you can spend those resources on the busi­ness – eval­u­at­ing, invest­ing in, and adapt­ing the right-fit tech­nol­o­gy and tal­ent to take your com­pet­i­tive­ness to the next lev­el,” says Jor­dan.

While mov­ing to the cloud is increas­ing­ly essen­tial, many com­pa­nies are still cau­tious about change though. Which is why a trust­ed part­ner is so impor­tant dur­ing any migra­tion jour­ney.
“An expert part­ner is crit­i­cal to a suc­cess­ful migra­tion to the cloud because they bring an indus­try per­spec­tive and long-term vision,” says Jor­dan. “They will have learned best prac­tices from all the oth­er com­pa­nies, prob­a­bly sev­er­al like yours, who have tack­led and solved many of the same chal­lenges you face.”

Most impor­tant­ly, busi­ness­es should seek an expert part­ner who will be there for the long haul. “Get­ting to the cloud is cer­tain­ly an impor­tant step, but the best part­ners are those who stay ahead of tech­nol­o­gy trends, under­stand your indus­try, and keep inno­vat­ing, so you can rely on them for years to come,” Jor­dan explains.

As such, it’s per­haps not sur­pris­ing that 47% of the 1,250 tech­nol­o­gy deci­sion-mak­ers Epi­cor sur­veyed for its Indus­try Insights report said a ded­i­cat­ed migra­tion part­ner is essen­tial. But despite the obvi­ous ben­e­fits of the cloud, fears around inte­gra­tions and data pro­tec­tion, as well as con­cerns around tal­ent, are still stop­ping some busi­ness­es from tak­ing the leap.

“Many com­pa­nies don’t know where to find accu­rate infor­ma­tion or even where to start,” says Jor­dan, who advis­es com­pa­nies to “pri­ori­tise your team first. Make sure you have the right peo­ple, empow­er them, and reward progress. Help them define suc­cess post-migra­tion so there is a clear under­stand­ing of val­ue.”

Those that get this right can unlock new com­pet­i­tive advan­tages – some­thing borne out by Epicor’s report, which found that 92% of all cloud busi­ness­es feel they are lead­ers or on par with the com­pe­ti­tion, while those most­ly on-premis­es feel left behind. What’s more, 36% of busi­ness­es on cloud expect to recov­er by the end of 2021, com­pared to only 28% of most­ly or all on-premis­es ones.

All this means it’s now unde­ni­able that the cloud is an essen­tial com­po­nent for sup­ply chain future-proof­ing. “There is no oth­er fea­si­ble tech­nol­o­gy mod­el to ensure long-term busi­ness suc­cess, espe­cial­ly giv­en the sheer scale of glob­al busi­ness, the amount of infor­ma­tion to be processed and secured, and the infi­nite pos­si­ble sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions to solve,” says Jor­dan. “Busi­ness lead­ers today need a plat­form that embraces inno­va­tion and turns data into insight, so they can con­fi­dent­ly lead their organ­i­sa­tions into the future.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it epicor.com

Pro­mot­ed by Epi­cor