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 |
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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 |
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Goals |
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Key performance indicators (KPIs) |
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Potential obstacles for moving to the cloud | |
Challenges |
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Risks |
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Blockers |
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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 |
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Business value |
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Financial improvements |
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Technical improvements |
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Other considerations |
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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.