A recent study by the IAPP (International Accounts Payable Professionals) shows that despite all the talk about automating Accounts Payable (AP) functions, more than 75 percent of all companies continue to be bogged down with paper-based processes.
Too many organizations still process AP functions without the benefit of technologies such as automated workflow and automated data capture because they do not have the IT staff or the funds needed to implement automation, according to the study. Is cloud computing an option for such companies?
Cloud-based services and Software as a Service (SaaS) options would certainly appear to be the proverbial silver lining for companies struggling to automate their AP functions. Cloud and SaaS technologies offer companies a way to offload the administration and management of IT applications and services. They eliminate the need for companies to purchase, install and maintain expensive IT infrastructures.
Hosted services have given IT organizations opportunity to reduce capital costs and improve operational efficiencies. Many small and medium businesses as well as large companies and government agencies have benefited enormously from such services.
Importantly, hosted services have given business units such as HR, sales, and marketing, a way to quickly acquire the IT services they need without having to wait for their IT organizations to develop it for them.
Such benefits have led to a surge in the use of cloud-based services over the past few years and there’s little reason why AP departments shouldn’t be tapping them as well. According to the IAPP, many organizations are already looking to outsource bits and pieces of the AP function to third-parties.
Close to two-thirds of the respondents in the IAPP survey said they would outsource their document imaging function if they could, while 45 percent indicated that they are ready to outsource their document archiving functions to a third-party.
Other AP functions that companies are looking to outsource include document receipt and sorting, data capture and invoice entry, purchase order and goods -receipt matching functions. At least some of these functions, such as document archiving as well as PO and goods receipt-matching functions would appear to be ideal candidates for outsourced cloud services.
For the moment at least, not too many companies are using cloud services for AP processing, according to the IAPP survey. However, the small handful of companies that have tapped cloud services, say they were able to automate AP functions with minimal IT involvement and minimal capital outlays. Other benefits cited by such companies included minimal initial setup costs and fast startup.
There’s little reason why more companies cannot derive the same benefits from cloud and SaaS technologies. Data security and privacy are legitimate concerns in cloud environments especially because AP departments typically handle some of the most sensitive data within a corporation.
However, neither of these factors should inhibit adoption of cloud services. Most major cloud providers already recognize the security concerns surrounding their services and offer a variety of access control and data protection mechanisms for alleviating those concerns.
The growing adoption of cloud services by government agencies is also pushing cloud service providers to adopt standard technologies and security processes such as the Federal Information Management Security Act (FISMA) for delivering their services.
Cloud computing and SaaS can be viable options for AP departments that are looking to automate critical AP processing functions but are hampered by resource and manpower constraints. The key is to figure out what functions to outsource and how to ensure adequate control over the outsourced AP applications and data.
We’d also be happy to act on your behalf and get answers to the key questions and concerns you have about cloud computing. If you have questions leave a comment below, contact us through this web form, send us a Tweet or contact me personally on Linkedin. Help us shape the editorial agenda for this blog so you can get the most value out of what we produce.
To stay up to date on new blog posts and Yakidoo’s cloud offering just subscribe via email or RSS feed to the right of this post.
Cloud Computing 101 Series
ECM in Action: Accounts Payable Processing [included demo video]
Frontend vs Backend Capture, Which is Better?
Victor Bensusan is CEO of Yakidoo. He has 20 years experience in Finance and Information Technology primarily in the area of process automation, information management and business performance improvement.
In our final installment of our Cloud Computing 101 series we’re going to focus on cloud computing for finance departments. Specifically what SaaS (software as a service) offerings exist today and where it may be heading in the future.
First of all what is the SaaS market look like? Here come more acronyms! Please bear with us! This is a helpful way to look at SaaS though.
We’ve created this table based on a report by Deloitte and our own take on the Enterprise SaaS landscape which is broken down in to the following sub-segments:
| SaaS-Category | What It Does | Who Has a Cloud Offering |
| CRM | Customer Relationship Management | Oracle, Salesforce.com, Rightnow, Microcroft Dyanamics CRM, Nimble, Netsuite |
| ERP | Enterprise Resource Planning | SAP, Netsuite, Workday, Intacct |
| SCM | Supply Chain Management | SCM Supply Chain Management Descartes, Ketera, Ariba |
| CCC | Content (capture, integration and management), Communications and Collaboration | Yakidoo, Webex, Citrix, SAP |
This table adapted from report: “Cloud Computing, Forecasting Change” (Deloitte, 2010). Yakidoo has broken down content into three key process areas that should be considered for an effective cloud service: they are capture, integration and management.
According to Gartner the popularity of SaaS had been increasing as early as 2008 when 40% of companies reported using SaaS within their organizations. This was up from 15% in 2006. More than half the companies using SaaS already planned to increase their investments with 25% planning to transition from on-premise to on-demand applications.
The projected growth between 2008 and 2013 in these sub-segments, according to Deloitte and Gartner, are illustrated in the chart below entitled: “Global SaaS Revenue” projections. It gives some insights in to the areas that finance departments will consider investing in SaaS applications.
From a finance perspective companies will lean towards investing in the cloud when it comes to content management, ERP and supply chain management. The key thing to consider from a content management perspective is how data will be captured especially when it comes to paper documents like invoices.
Invoice processing and management continues to plague many CFOs and should be addressed first so that all data can be captured and properly integrated in to enterprise systems including ERP systems and Content Management systems. We’ve discussed the issues and costs associated to paper invoice processing and management in an earlier blog post.
With cloud services becoming more popular and accepted, finance departments now have various options to deploy document capture and content management applications. For example, service/solution providers like Yakidoo can implement data capture and content management applications on-premise, as a managed service or via the cloud.
The key is to understand what you need to accomplish, how your business processes and uses information, and what your companies policies and preferences are regarding data management.
A good starting point to discover what the right options are for your company can be a business optimization workshop. Sorry about the promotional plug! We do offer them.
In future posts we’ll be outlining how we are using these workshops to help customers understand and decide on the better options for data capture and content management.
We’d also be happy to act on your behalf and get answers to the key questions and concerns you have about cloud computing. If you have questions leave a comment below, contact us through this web form, send us a Tweet or contact me personally on Linkedin. Help us shape the editorial agenda for this blog so you can get the most value out of what we produce.
To stay up to date on this series and Yakidoo’s cloud offering just subscribe via email or RSS feed.
Cloud Computing 101 Series
ECM in Action: Accounts Payable Processing [included demo video]
Frontend vs Backend Capture, Which is Better?
ECM (Electronic Content Management) 101 Series
Victor Bensusan is CEO of Yakidoo. He has 20 years experience in Finance and Information Technology primarily in the area of process automation, information management and business performance improvement.
I thought we’d carry over the food theme from our last post “What is IaaS, PaaS and SaaS?”, part of our cloud computing 101 series. In this post we will cover the four options for deploying the cloud: Public, Community, Private and Hybrid.
Before we get to that though, let’s take a step back for a minute and explain a bit more on how cloud computing has been made possible. We’ve covered the pros and cons of Cloud Computing already but what’s made cloud computing possible is virtualization.
I’m oversimplifying but essentially virtualization creates a virtual bridge between all the servers in a data center. This makes it possible for, for example, for companies to have their applications (web sites, ERP systems etc.) run on more than one server in order to make them run faster and better. It also makes it possible to better use each servers computing capacity.
Traditionally companies will overbuy hardware to ensure they have the necessary horsepower in their data center during peak business cycles. For example, during the holiday season a retailer’s site can’t go down. So, the retailer buys the necessary hardware, software and connectivity to handle web traffic for the busiest time of the year. But, what happens during the other ten months?
The hardware for example is grossly underused but costs you space and energy costs. It’s like buying an F1 race car in order to win a weekend race and then driving it to work for the remain 363 days!
Virtualization, using software from companies like VMware, has made it possible to virtualize hardware and applications and spread their use across servers and deliver them as services on-demand. When you need more computing capacity for your website you simply use it when you need it. Not when you don’t. So, virtualization combined with reliable and always on Internet connectivity has given birth to the cloud.
There are four “deployment models” that exist that you’ll hear about, they are: Public, Private, Community and Hybrid Cloud. We’ve got a table and an infographic below that describes these deployment models in more detail. But, before you check them out here’s how we define them.
InfographicsThe infographics above provides some more information (maybe too much!). As you can see there’s no shortage of definitions! But, we hope that ours and the Infographic here, are helpful to you.
Feel Free to Participate and Add to the Conversation
We’d also be happy to act on your behalf and get answers to the key questions and concerns you have about cloud computing. If you have questions leave a comment below, contact us through this web form, send us a Tweet or contact me personally on Linkedin. Help us shape the editorial agenda for this series so you can get the most value out of what we produce.
To stay up to date on this series and Yakidoo’s cloud offering just subscribe via email or RSS feed to the right of this post.
What is Cloud Computing? [video & infographic]
Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing
How Big is the Cloud Computing Market Anyway?
What is IaaS, PaaS and SaaS?
Other Series
ECM (Electronic Content Management) 101 Series
Alfredo De Vanna is CTO of Yakidoo. He has over 10 years of international experience deploying over 80 critical information technology and enterprise content management systems. He is fluent in English and Spanish.
Are you hungry for some alphabet soup of cloud computing acronyms? This is our fifth post in our Cloud Computing 101 Series. So far we’ve answered the question “What is Cloud Computing?”, we’ve talked about the pros and cons of cloud computing and given you some data on the projected growth of the cloud computing market.
In our last few posts we’re going to cover the “cloud stack”, the three types of cloud computing options and where and why CFOs and finance departments are looking to the cloud to help them and their organizations be more successful.
In this post we’re going to talk about the “cloud computing stack” which, right now, consists of three core service buckets:
What Would Technology Be Without a Bunch of Acronyms Adding to the Proverbial Alphabet Soup?!
Given the “newness” of cloud computing and the fact that us “technologists” sometimes add too much complexity to what we offer and say we’ve attempted to succinctly and in plain english define what these three service buckets are with real world examples and the people in your organization that would likely use the service.
The graphic below provides you with a simple definition of each layer of the stack, along with some examples and who most likely in your organization will use the service.
We’d also be happy to act on your behalf and get answers to the key questions and concerns you have about cloud computing. If you have questions leave a comment below, contact us through this web form, send us a Tweet or contact me personally on Linkedin. Help us shape the editorial agenda for this series so you can get the most value out of what we produce.
To stay up to date on this series and Yakidoo’s cloud offering just subscribe via email or RSS feed to the right of this post.
What is Cloud Computing? [video & infographic]
Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing
How Big is the Cloud Computing Market?
ECM (Electronic Content Management) 101 Series
Alfredo De Vanna is CTO of Yakidoo. He has over 10 years of international experience deploying over 80 critical information technology and enterprise content management systems. He is fluent in English and Spanish.
This is our third post in our Cloud Computing 101 Series. In our last post we provided a high level definition featuring a video from the U.S. Government explaining the cloud and why the Federal CIO office is bullish on using cloud technology.
We believe that small to large enterprises will be considering the cloud for specific business processes they’d like to outsource such as accounts payable.
One of the key goals of the CFO is to automate portions of the accounts payable process to reduce invoice processing time, costs and errors.
Yakidoo’s cloud service will enable process automation and information integration with an electronic content management system and ERP system. We will cover this in more depth in a later post.
Below we’ve outlined some of the general advantages of the cloud along with some pros and cons for you to consider. At the outset you need to think about whether the cloud or your data center will best serve some or all of your needs. Generally speaking small to midsized businesses are more apt to adopt the cloud.
| Potential Advantage | Pro | Con |
| Cost | No capital costs for servers, software, networking equipment and additional bandwidth. | While companies will write off the cost of the cloud service they can’t depreciate the assets over time on the balance sheet. |
| Flexibility | Use and pay for what you need. As demand for applications, server space and computing power decreases so do your costs. | IT departments can lose control because departments can bypass them to try, develop and deploy new applications. |
| Availability | You can access your applications from any device from anywhere using an Internet connection. | You need to be connected to the Internet to use the cloud. |
| Security | Most cloud provider's data centers are SAS 70 compliant and proactive in ensuring security threats are minimized. They keep hardware and software up to date with security patches and upgrades. | Cloud providers need to ensure that security updates are taking place as required to ensure a secure and stable service. Critical corporate information may be hosted offsite. |
| Performance | During busy times such as year-end or holiday shopping periods more capacity can be purchased to ensure web sites don’t crash and your year-end get closed on time. | You’ll need to predict capacity and load to ensure you buy enough. |
| Support | Given the scale of most cloud service data centers they must have top quality technicians on staff 24x7 to ensure service performance quality, security and overall support. | Dependency on external resources for support of key applications can be a concern to some. |
| Speed | You can have an application up and running faster than if you’d have to install it locally on a server. | The trade off is that applications in the cloud are more generic and not conducive to customization. |
We’d also be happy to act on your behalf and get answers to the key questions and concerns you have about cloud computing. If you have questions leave a comment below, contact us through this web form, send us a Tweet or contact me personally on Linkedin.
Help us shape the editorial agenda for this series so you can get the most value out of what we produce.
To stay up to date on this series and Yakidoo’s cloud offering just subscribe via email or RSS feed.
Introducing Yakidoo’s Cloud Computing 101 Series
What is Cloud Computing? [video & infographic]
Victor Bensusan is CEO of Yakidoo. He has 20 years experience in Finance and Information Technology primarily in the area of process automation, information management and business performance improvement.
This is our fourth post in our Cloud Computing 101 Series. In our last posts we answered the question What is Cloud Computing and outlined some of the Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing.
In this post we’re going to shre with you a quick snapshot of the cloud computing market in order to illustrate it’s past and potential growth.
Cloud computing whether it be public, private or hybrid is here to stay and some would argue is near or achieved “mainstreet status”. This post will provide you with some data points on the growth of the market, charts and an infographic and some links to in-depth coverage on the growth of the cloud.
(Sources: Saugatuck Technologies, Market Intel Group, Standard and Poors)
We all have to take predictions and projections with a grain of salt and each business has a unique set of needs and requirements when it comes to considering the cloud. It’s safe to say however that cloud computing, driven in part by virtualization and the need for companies to reduce costs and be more flexible, will continue to grow.
The chart and the infographic link, below provide some more information on the state of the cloud computing market.
(Source: The Future of Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Green IT – Global Technologies & Markets Outlook – 2011-2016 by Market Intel Group)
Please click on the link for the, Stats On Cloud Marketing Infographic
We’d also be happy to act on your behalf and get answers to the key questions and concerns you have about cloud computing. If you have questions leave a comment below, contact us through this web form, send us a Tweet, contact me personally on Linkedin or give us a call at 905.267.3949. Help us shape the editorial agenda for this series so you can get the most value out of what we produce.
To stay up to date on this series and Yakidoo’s cloud offering just subscribe via email or RSS feed.
What is Cloud Computing? [video & infographic]
Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing
ECM (Electronic Content Management) 101 Series
Victor Bensusan is CEO of Yakidoo. He has 20 years experience in Finance and Information Technology primarily in the area of process automation, information management and business performance improvement.
This is our second post in our Cloud Computing 101 Series. In our introductory post we promised that we would avoid hype and complexity and we intend to do that.
Wikipedia is having problems defining what cloud computing is. Their editors have cited this definition as a personal essay, that is too technical for non-experts and needs the attention of an expert!
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”
We think this video from the U.S. Government provides a good overview of what Cloud Computing is. Give it a watch.
Now, if you turn to your own situation you’ll probably think about your own data center or server room. This is the room that the IT department has your servers in and where your company connects to the Internet. This is where your accounting software, email systems, file servers and other software that your company uses exists.
Traditionally, if your company needed to use new accounting software you would likely have to buy the software, a new server, maybe additional networking equipment to allow people to use the software. You’d likely have to buy more servers than you need because during the last few days of the month your accounting software is heavily used to close the month. You need to overbuy capacity to ensure the servers don’t crash during month end.
If you were using the cloud, the servers, software and networking equipment would most likely not be in your data center or computer room. Instead they would reside elsewhere in someone else’s data center and your employees would access and use the software via the Internet. In the corporate world this is called Enterprise Cloud Computing.
Salesforce.com offers Customer Relationship Management software via the cloud. Employees access this software on-demand via the Internet. As the demand for the CRM application increases and decreases so does the cost and demand on their data center resources. Consumers that use eBay, Netflix, Gmail and Amazon are all using the cloud as well.
This infographic from Wikibon provides a visual illustration that may be helpful.
There are pros and cons to using the cloud and in this post we cover some of them for you.
We’d also be happy to act on your behalf and get answers to the key questions and concerns you have about cloud computing. If you have questions leave a comment below, contact us through this web form, send us a Tweet or contact me personally on Linkedin.
To stay up to date on this series and Yakidoo’s cloud offering just subscribe via email or RSS feed to the right of this post.
Introducing Yakidoo’s Cloud Computing 101 Series
Alfredo De Vanna is CTO of Yakidoo. He has over 10 years of international experience deploying over 80 critical information technology and enterprise content management systems. He is fluent in English and Spanish.
The “Cloud” continues to be a topic of conversation and hype in the technology industry. We’re hearing about the public cloud, hybrid cloud and private cloud.
We’re hearing about the “cloud stack” consisting of PaaS, IaaS and SaaS (here come the acronyms!). When, will we ever learn?!
I’d be the first to admit that the hype can be offputting and confusing. The promise of the new and shiny technology gets us all excited but let’s face it, unless you're Steve Jobs, explaining what "the cloud" is and can do for business is like watching paint dry or worse a migraine in the making.
So, just like our ECM 101 series we’re introducing a new 101 series on Cloud Computing. Over the coming months we’ll be blogging about cloud computing to help our customers better understand how cloud computing can potentially help them in their business.
We’d also be happy to act on your behalf and get answers to the key questions and concerns you have about cloud computing. If you have questions leave a comment below, contact us through this web form, send us a Tweet or contact me personally on Linkedin.
Help us shape the editorial agenda for this series so you can get the most value out of what we produce.
Why are we focusing on the cloud you may ask? There are two reasons:
We’re doing our little part to hopefully show you where the silver lining is through our Cloud Computing 101 series and through our new cloud offering launching later this year.
To stay up to date on this series and Yakidoo’s cloud offering just subscribe via email or RSS feed.
Victor Bensusan is CEO of Yakidoo. He has 20 years experience in Finance and Information Technology primarily in the area of process automation, information management and business performance improvement.
