SaaS And Cloud Computing Taking Off With Financials And Accounting Professionals

Proformative, an online community for corporate, finance, accounting, treasury and related professionals, recently conducted an online survey of their members and found that these professionals are more open to SaaS and Cloud Computing than ever before. We have to keep in mind that this survey and report was sponsored by Netsuite and we should take into account possible biases that could have creeped into any vendor sponsored survey/report. Even then, the numbers are encouraging and shows upward momentum. Financials and accounting professionals have been holding out for a long time when it comes to cloud adoption but it may be weakening now.

According to the survey (click on the link for Executive Summary):

55% of respondents agree that Cloud Computing and SaaS will be very important to their companies over the next 2 years and another 32% recognize that they need to be educated on the subject
Of companies already operating in the cloud, 77% report CAPEX reduction as one of the greatest benefits realized of cloud computing and SaaS, and CAPEX reduction as of being at least a medium level company priority
Of companies already operating in the cloud, 71% report increased collaboration and greater confidence in their systems and that being at least a medium level company priority
Of companies already operating in the cloud, 69% report Higher ROI as one of the greatest benefits realized of cloud computing and SaaS, and high ROI as being at least a medium level company priority

The survey was conducted with 425 professionals with a large chunk of them in the executive positions and 30% of the survey respondents were from companies with $10M – 100M revenue and more than 10% have more than $1B revenue. The professionals came from wide variety of verticals from Biotech to Telecom to retail to manufacturing.

As SaaS and Cloud models mature and people understand that the value lies in the business agility, we will see more uptake in the adoption across many different professions. 2010 put an end to lots of FUD going on about cloud computing and now we are seeing companies big and small jumping in, at least to test the waters. I would say another survey conducted next year will see a larger shift in cloud adoption among the financials and accounting professionals.