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Gone are the days when leading in the financial services (FS) market meant offering attractive fees, a strong footprint, and great customer service. To thrive in this ever-changing and competitive sector, FS organizations also need to continuously lower costs and be able to quickly integrate high volumes of complex data. That's why many chief financial officers (CFOs) are investing in middle- and back-office technology to help standardize processes, enhance reporting, and improve efficiency. Today's financial environment is simply too complex not to be supported by modern financial reporting systems and digital operations.
Balancing the need to drive near-term performance with the imperative to invest for the future
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Companies are also leveraging the cloud journey so they can better address regulatory concerns (e.g., data lineage, reconciliations, balance sheet substantiation) that have creeped in over the years. In addition, some of the world's industry-leading enterprises are reaping the benefits from artificial intelligence (AI), including the use of powerful analytics tools, to enable the C-suite to analyze vast amounts of data and help deliver actionable insights. Advanced automation enabled by AI can then use data-driven insights to help support decision-making.
Top considerations for your cloud migration program's success
From selection and implementation to providing ongoing application evolution services, we at PwC have helped companies worldwide modernize finance operations and capture business value through Oracle Cloud transformations. Based on our experience, we encourage you to keep these five key considerations in mind:
1. Identify the right implementation strategy for your organization
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy, and identifying the ideal fit for your organization can depend on several factors, including the company's size, global presence, risk tolerance, value drivers and other factors. Many organizations, however, choose a phased strategy -- migrating to a cloud platform either module-by-module or region-by-region, for example. This approach can help prevent inefficiencies of duplicate systems, and it can be driven either by lines of business priorities or sunseting legacy platform or specific business processes.
This was the case of one of the world's largest custody asset banks, managing nearly $2 trillion in assets and operating in 30+ countries. Seeking to modernize processes and improve functionality across territories, the company identified the need to replace more than 150 outdated consolidation systems and general ledgers. Given the size of the organization and volume of data it integrates daily, replacing those systems region-by-region would require the company to use two or three general ledgers at a time. To avoid this challenge, they opted for migrating one business process, such as record to report, at a time throughout the organization.
On the other end of the spectrum, some enterprises opt to migrate the entire technology stack to the cloud at once using what is known as a "big bang" approach. This was the strategy adopted by a global financial technology company that operates in more than 150 countries. They chose to migrate entirely from Oracle's on-premise E-Business Suite to
2. Approach your transformation holistically
Your organization might benefit from implementing other Oracle cloud capabilities to help modernize human capital management, supply chain management, and customer experience, to list a few functions. As
3. Assess your organization's data readiness
Data quality is often at the heart of every cloud transformation. The success of your cloud transformation relies on your data quality. Evaluate if your data is standardized to enable the efficient upload of information to the cloud, and consider engaging a consulting team with experience in the financial services sector to help your organization identify a data strategy and execute a data management plan going forward. Many organizations tend to shortchange this area before embarking on a cloud migration and, as a result, they spend considerable time standardizing the source systems leveraging either preprocessors or industry applications to buffer the dependencies on legacy source system.
4. Evaluate the business value realization
There is increasing pressure to show benefits early, and beyond traditional automation and standardization, companies are undergoing digital transformations to help drive tangible outcomes, reduce operational costs, and unleash growth. Whether you are seeking to help improve processes, enhance business agility, or unlock efficiencies
5. Leverage the benefits of emerging technology
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The embedded capabilities help fine-tune prebuilt models and augment them with your own enterprise data from Oracle's built-in vector database for a wide range of use cases, including writing assistance, summarization, analysis, and digital assistant. Specifically, we have seen FS clients leverage AI to help streamline operations, planning and forecasting processes through more efficient manual entry, purchase order to invoice matching, cash flow forecasting, and narrative reporting.
Ultimately, learning about industry-leading practices in financial services can help you choose the appropriate path based on your company's objectives and unique challenges. The opportunities are exciting as your start your journey to the cloud, and we encourage you to explore how PwC's industry-specific experience, innovative solutions, and proven collaboration with Oracle can help your organization successfully migrate to the cloud. Visit
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