How the ‘Cloud’ empowers treasurers

| 20-12-2016 | Kasja Reinders | GT News |

cloud‘The term ‘Cloud’ has become the buzzword for organisations interested in simplifying and transforming technology over the past several years. ‘The Cloud’ is used to describe a process or system of sharing technological resources to gain scale, efficiencies and reduce cost – or more simply put, using a network of computers to manage and process information, rather than a single computer or machine.’ According to GTNews in their article about how the ‘Cloud’ empowers treasurers.

Apparantly ‘Cloud’ adoption rates have been growing over the past several years in virtually every industry and in all parts of the world. How about the financial world and treasury in particular? Are treasurers reluctant to use the ‘Cloud’ or not? GT News states that ‘the endeavour of installing hardware and software is viewed by treasurers as too costly, resource-intensive and as leading to a longer overall implementation timeline. The cost effectiveness of the ‘Cloud’ is a major reason for treasurers to seek the cloud. Security is an issue of course. Treasurers are moving toward either private or public cloud deployments. ‘Some treasurers view private ‘Cloud’ environments as more secure than shared, public ‘Cloud’ environments; others are comfortable with recent developments in public ‘Cloud’ security’, according to GTnews.

 4 major reasons to use the cloud

To summarize their reasons, the 4 most important are:

  • Minimal internal treasury and IT support required for setup and maintenance.
  • The option of faster, more standardised implementations.
  • Significantly lower overall total cost of ownership.
  • Minimal upgrade effort and cost.

But how and to what extent does the ‘Cloud’ really help treasury departments to innovate and improve? GT News: ‘The ‘Cloud’ allows treasurers to move further away from operational, non-value added tasks such as those related to the maintenance of technology (implementing, upgrading, supporting), to more analytical and strategic initiatives. Frequent and seamless updates and enhancement of the technology allows treasurers to utilise the latest functionality without the need for a significant upgrade process. This is key, because it allows treasurers to consume new and innovative technologies as quickly and easily as possible.’

GT News concludes: ‘Corporate treasurers should demand that vendors in the treasury technology space stay ahead of the cloud curve, by providing the most secure, functionally powerful and innovative ‘Cloud’ solutions.’

We asked our expert, Kasja Reinders, to comment on this topic:

The ‘Cloud’….. some consider it ‘something untouchable’,  others really love it.
My opinion… for some companies the ‘Cloud’ is not really interesting because they have their own IT department with a good back up system and employees who will take care of it and know what they are doing.
If you are working in the ‘Cloud’ it is actually nothing else then putting your information on another server which is managed by a different company. That means that you are outsourcing your IT servers and you will miss the control on it.  The problem is that you aren’t sure if the company that will take care of your information is doing this in the way you want it.
But I imagine that for a lot of companies this will work well and that is why they are using the ‘Cloud’.
For treasury departments I think it won’t be usefull. Treasury managers as I are working with confidential information and therefore I would rather not work in the ‘Cloud’.
It is this feeling I have that tells me it is not save, but maybe we treasurers need to keep pace with times and start using the ‘Cloud’. The future will tell us if it is save or not.
Kasja ReindersKasja Reinders – Treasury/Cash Manager

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