Kai Petzelt, Vice President of Product Marketing for Oracle HCM, wrote about the top 10 reasons why companies should consider moving HCM in the Cloud. Companies need technology that supports areas like compensation, payroll, benefits, performance, and time management all in one platform. This technology also needs to adhere to the latest compliance and regulatory requirements. Requirements like this mean that this technology cannot be limited to the boundaries of an on-premises solution.

Petzelt points out that in order to benefit from all of the capabilities while having the lowest maintenance and effort to control and update systems, small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) should take their human capital management (HCM) practices to the Cloud. Doing so can help these businesses connect various HR initiatives and technology across the enterprise. In addition to low maintenance and additional capabilities, Petzelt laid out the top 10 reasons to move HCM in the Cloud.

10 Reasons to Move HCM in the Cloud

Security for HR and Financial Data

Having reliable technology enables IT departments to focus on business impacts and support the lines of business. By selecting the right Cloud vendor, small-to-medium businesses can ensure that sensitive HR and financial data will always be safe and secure in the Cloud.

A Unified Application Environment

Integration should not be a boundary for having HCM in the Cloud. Having payroll, compensation, and performance as parts of one unified system ensures that HR data format is consistent with compensation and payroll formats, so system administrators aren’t dealing with every single entity and managing information in small portions.

A Scalable Solution

A small-to-medium business can use the database and data warehouses that are precisely the correct size for their current needs and expand them in the future as the business requirements change, such as during an expansion of geographical presence, an increase in hiring, or when acquiring new companies.

Centralized Data Sources with One Source of Truth

Cloud technologies empower a high-growth business to both load and store all data from disparate sources in one single place, data warehouse, or data lake. Due to this, organizations can track the changes, provide access to richer data for analytics across the board, and extract more impactful insights. Having a single source of truth helps all managers generate trustworthy and credible reports in real-time with the best available information.

A Focus on Performance

Having a unified compensation and performance management solution helps companies focus on performance improvement, recognize the high performers, and reward them on the spot based on their achievements. In this way, companies can reduce attrition and increase employee satisfaction. They can also gain access to better business performance across the board. However, this cannot be achieved with fragmented technologies and multiple pieces of applications that don’t talk to each other.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can take this factor to the next level by predicting high-performing employees, salary trends, potential risk of attrition and flight risk to help businesses stay on top of the competition by focusing on their most valuable resource – talents.

Transformation of Business Practices

Moving HCM in the Cloud can potentially transform business processes if it is seen as a holistic move that covers all aspects of the business and focuses on the way of working more efficiently.

Regulatory Compliance

Monitoring processes to ensure compliance requires intelligent solutions that are able to detect any anomaly and also enable all workers to perform in the right direction – aligned with business objectives. The goals should be defined concerning all regulations, and proper risk management practices should also be acknowledged and rewarded.

Consistent Experience

Users need to learn how to use a system intuitively. Once they learn a process, they should be able to apply the same knowledge across all applications and tools. This is where consistency plays a vital role. To keep systems usable – with simplified interfaces and streamlined processes – a small-to-medium business needs to continuously improve the experience while also upgrading the solutions with the latest and greatest trends and technologies.

Simplified Maintenance

Tying compensation with performance requires solutions that track, analyze, and manage team compensation, salary, and benefits in the most effective way without adding a huge load of work to the busy schedule of business managers or human resources professionals. The Cloud can do that.

In addition, HR staff reduce their dependency on IT departments. Lower dependency frees time for IT to focus on critical problems and helps HR to deliver their services without interruption.

Overall Cost of Ownership

Any investment that your company makes should have a positive return on investment (ROI). Many organizations believe that a lower cost of ownership is the top motivation to utilize the Cloud. Reducing the total cost of ownership by removing both hardware costs and labor costs in an on-premises situation can be a significant step to achieve a higher ROI.

Businesses thrive if, and only if, they get the most out of their HR data and leverage it to attract, recruit, and develop talents. Maybe most important, Cloud-based human capital management (HCM) helps a small-to-medium business retain and motivate their talents to be high performers.

Additional Resources

For more Oracle HCM Cloud resources, case studies, best practices, etc., check out Quest’s Oracle HCM Cloud Content Center. There are resources and training available for all aspects of HCM Cloud, including payroll, analytics, recruiting, and more!