Define Your Goals

Clearly define the business goals that you want to achieve with cloud adoption. Use the concept of cloud economics to understand the cost, benefits, and value of adopting the cloud.

Defining Success Metrics

Business goals are success metrics. When creating your business goals, consider your organization's mission, the objectives for cloud adoption, and the potential obstacles that you need to overcome.

Your organization's mission and vision should be the guiding principle for your cloud adoption initiative. When you align your cloud adoption goals with your organization's overall strategic goals, it helps drive sponsorship and engagement for the initiative.

With the context of your organization's business strategy in place, the next step is to identify the value of moving to the cloud. Evaluate the reasons behind the move, define the goals that you want to accomplish, and identify the key performance indicators for success. The more specific you are, the easier it is for your organization to support the initiative, evaluate progress, and adjust its current operating model for success.

The final step to define your business goals is to analyze the challenges and risks that you anticipate as part of your cloud adoption initiative. By including the potential difficulties as part of your strategic approach, it can help you identify the right stakeholders and facilitate the solution process.

Use the following tables as a template to document your organization's business strategy, the value that your organization can gain from moving to the cloud, and the potential obstacles that you need to address.

Table 2-2 Business Strategy Template

Strategy Component	Your Information
Mission	Enter your organization's mission
Vision	Enter your organization's vision
Strategic goals	Enter your organization's strategic goals
Market trends, drivers, and threats	Enter the trends, drivers, and threats for your organization
Value of moving to the cloud
Reasons	Executive mandate General transformation Innovation Growth Data center exit Merger and acquisition Competitor innovation Support for a new business Aging infrastructure Performance Management and reporting applications need for rationalization Manual and time-consuming inter-company eliminations Difficult translation from management reporting to GAAP reporting Lack of governance of hierarchies and reporting metadata Inability to adapt efficiently to business changes Lack of chart of accounts governance and consistency Other examples that apply to your organization
Goals	Digital transformation Estate modernization Reducing the effort to close the books or reducing the forecasting cycles Access to technology Lower operations and maintenance costs Greater cost efficiencies Budget and cost control Data-driven transformation Improved transparency and reporting Increased flexibility and predictability of the planning and forecasting processes Improved efficiency and performance of the financial close process Automation of account reconciliations Improved agility and innovation of the EPM systems, including reporting Enhanced workflow and reporting Reduced application downtime Other examples that apply to your organization
Key performance indicators (KPIs)	Reducing the effort to close the books or reducing the forecasting cycles Percent of accounts reconciled automatically Reduced TCO Reduced maintenance time Reduced time to report Percentage in savings Manageability Increased forecast accuracy Other examples that apply to your organization
Potential obstacles for moving to the cloud
Challenges	Lack of confidence Resistance to change Technical debt and legacy systems Complexity Compliance and regulatory requirements Other examples that apply to your organization
Risks	Security Data loss Data privacy Data sovereignty Service availability Performance Other examples that apply to your organization
Blockers	Current technical architecture Compatibility Other examples that apply to your organization

When you formally document and communicate the opportunities and challenges of moving to the cloud, you establish your cloud transformation as the basis for agility and innovation. Solid business goals, particularly in the context of your organization's overall business strategy, help focus your organization on future-oriented, value-adding activities.

Some goals can be measured as a percentage of improvement over time. Here are examples of KPIs that represent improvements and show how the balance of time has been changed. Now, more time is spent on creating strategic plans than on delivering the plans.

Cloud Economics: The Value of Cloud EPM Adoption

Cloud economics is a concept that can help your organization evaluate the costs, benefits, and underlying principles of the cloud. When you understand the finances of cloud computing, you can optimize the value of your cloud transformation.

For example, if your organization is migrating from traditional on-premises IT to a cloud environment, you must shift asset ownership and depreciation to an on-demand usage model. You might also move from a CAPEX (capital) model to an OPEX (operational) model. Licensing, commercial terms, and contracting terms also change when you move from on-premises IT to the cloud.

If your organization is already operating in the cloud, you must consider the economic impact of switching providers or adopting a multicloud strategy.

For cloud adoption to be successful, your organization should be fully aware of the changes, and plan to modernize processes related to acquisition, depreciation, and expenses. Documenting the financial value of cloud adoption helps your finance department update processes from a traditional IT procurement model to a cloud consumption model. It also helps the rest of your organization quantify the value of cloud adoption.

Use the examples in the following table to identify and prioritize the key criteria from cloud economics that apply to your organization. This helps you develop your business case for continuous adoption of EPM Cloud.

Table 2-3 Cloud Economics Template

Business value of cloud adoption	Examples
Business value	Process improvements in planning, financial consolidation and close, and all the EPM Cloud business processes On-premises spending repurposed to cloud capability acquisition Operational costs shifted to innovation Remote work Improved agility through the use of best practices Operational resiliency Enhanced compliance Support for the organization’s long-term plans
Financial improvements	Financial flexibility Reduced cost of ownership (TCO) Real-time transparency on cost control, usage, and allocation License reduction Support of business services Reduced facility costs
Technical improvements	Agility High availability Disaster recovery Compliance Capabilities for optimizing performance Security and other related patching are taken care of
Other considerations	Cloud optimization Scalability Capital expenses (CAPEX) shifted to operational expenses (OPEX) Asset depreciation Flexible frameworks that can be configured

A good practice during this stage is to define and implement IT showback or chargeback models for the business units that will use cloud computing resources. This can help transition your IT department from a cost center to a value enabler.