As we kick off 2014, our thoughts inevitably turn to what will happen in the New Year. Here is my personal take on trends, change agents and motivators for accounting and finance in 2014.
Cloud to leap forward. According to Gartner, cloud computing will become the bulk of new IT spend by 2016. IDC predicts that from 2013–2017, public IT cloud services will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.5 percent, five times that of the IT industry as a whole. Although cloud adoption in the finance function initially lagged behind other functions including HR, sales and marketing, it is now catching up.
As the cloud market starts to mature, two important themes will become more evident in 2014. Firstly, larger organizations will continue to transition to the cloud, often as part of a two tier strategy as they seek to wind down legacy systems and simultaneously leverage new applications available in the cloud. Secondly, cost reduction will no longer be seen as the main driver behind a move to the cloud. CFOs will see that the cloud can serve more broadly as a springboard for process transformation, innovation and increased business agility.
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Source: Jeremy Roche (www.insights.wired.com)
