AN ECOSYSTEM OF OFFERINGS
ERP In the past, all services existed on one platform; the vendor offered no option to tailor for specific business needs.
ERP 2.0
Vendors are now specializing in individual platforms that integrate together; businesses can now pick and choose offerings sized to their needs and budget.
for smaller organizations, leaving them with no real options for managing their data. Now, as a more approachable and reasonably priced option, we are seeing vendors focus on providing solutions that do one or two things really well and then using APIs to connect and pass data to other systems. Take Gusto, for example. The company decided to specialize in payroll and benefits, utilizing its API to integrate with other platforms that focus on their own specific value proposition such as bookkeeping or time tracking. They can provide their customers more value by focusing on making payroll and benefits management a superior experience and then integrating with their preferred vendors. By using APIs, vendors are now putting the power in the hands of the business to select the solutions that are the best fit for their needs and fit within their budget. This means that fully integrated solutions like Oracle will be replaced by an ecosystem of offerings. For instance, a business may select an expense management solution fvrom one vendor, an inventory management system from another and a purchaseorder system from a third. This “pick and choose” model results in businesses essentially creating an ERP solution that is completely customized. That’s not to say that the Oracles of the world will take the emergence of ERP 2.0 lying down. We can expect them to acquire smaller vendors that are focused on specific services to create their own a la carte offerings, as well as opening their own APIs to allow for integrations from other vendors to they can participate in the interconnected cloud in order to compete.
therefore, will start to become a prominent question during the buying process for businesses and will push vendors to focus more on security measures for their platforms. Finance teams will need to be educated in security and IT management best practices. They will have to start looking at cloud accounting services in terms of functionality, productivity and security, and will need to start asking tougher questions. We will see them start to team up with IT earlier in the evaluation process to develop and institute SaaS products that are not only valuable, but more secure given the highly sensitive nature of financial data. The other big topic will be around data ownership and storage. With multiple systems housing various pieces of a company’s financial data, it will be imperative that businesses understand the process for exporting their data or porting it to other systems. Businesses will also ask more questions during the evaluation process around how their data is stored – how long, storage location – and who internally has access to that data to ensure that it is protected from all sides. In 2016, we will see the rise of vendors focusing on providing more access to data for those financial teams who are ready to embrace a more agile decision making process. It will also result in a more technical and datadriven finance team that is focused on strategic insights and analysis.
AN EMPHASIS ON SECURITY With the emergence of the interconnected systems of ERP 2.0, it is only inevitable that we will see an increased focus on data security and backup. Highly sensitive financial data – such as corporate card, payroll and revenue information – will come from a variety of platforms to create the finance data engine. This presents data risks like overwriting, accidental deletion and system breaches. Security,
Payment Quarterly | Q1 2016
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