When companies decide to implement NetSuite and/or Adaptive Planning, the goal is to positively transform business performance with cloud-based solutions. Whether this means streamlining manufacturing, improving financial analytics, or boosting e-commerce operations, the right mix of process and technology can make all the difference.
But today, business transformation is not a one-and-done process where you install new software, tweak a few business operations, and call it a day... It’s an on-going process.
In Part 2 of this series, we introduced the concept of Kaizen, commonly referred to as Continuous Improvement. In a business environment defined by rapid technological change, organizations that embrace the Kaizen philosophy work to incrementally enhance operations and adding overall value to the company through increased margins, streamlined operations and happy employees.Now, let's focus in on one of the biggest selling points of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions like Adaptive Insights and NetSuite - enabling continuous improvement with continuously improving cloud software.
Remember the old days of platform-on-premise computing? That sticky hot server room, unpredictable equipment, and all that time and energy spent internally on platform updates. Not to mention that by the time your platform upgrade was complete, and teams are getting used to the new operations, it's time to start planning for your next disruptive upgrade.
For many, these aren't the old days. It's your everyday. And these issues are likely holding your organization back (and making your life all that more difficult). It's extremely hard to focus efforts on continual improvement when your IT team is bogged down.
Taking operations to the cloud is an effective way to shift the focus away from maintaining servers and IT infrastructure, and placing it where it belongs - IT's role in driving revenue for your business.
Traditionally, upgrades to Platform-on-premise solutions are burdensome and time/resource consuming. These upgrades are relegated to annual executions - the learning curve for users is steep with each update, and the IT team must deal with the fall-out.
SaaS companies have adopted continuous improvement in reaction to a constantly evolving technology landscape. Cloud SaaS is updated regularly, with small improvements constantly being pushed to the end user, many unnoticeable and rarely making large waves within your organization.
Both Adaptive Planning and NetSuite have larger twice-yearly releases, bolstered by smaller code pushes at regular intervals. This timing offers regular, semi-annual opportunities for customers to examine their operations and how processes could be improved using features and functions in Adaptive Planning or NetSuite.
But with the daily demands of the business, many organizations find it challenging to adopt innovative features on the fly. They make the mistake of letting update cycles pass by without taking advantage of new enhancements.
In the case of Adaptive Planning, this means that they may have innovative financial planning functionality they don’t know how to use. One way to prevent this scenario from happening is to work with partner experts that can keep you and your business on the right track.