Cloud solutions: Enabling scalability and Accessibility

Digital Transformation is a way forward for any business to accelerate growth. Cactus Communications, a technology company accelerating scientific advancement, was facing some major challenges in its financial activities and data. We spoke to Dinesh Modi, Chief Financial Officer, Cactus Communications to understand the challenges and the right solution for them.

The key business challenges

We have seen rapid growth in terms of our workforce and offices outside India. We wanted to consolidate financial activities and data from all the offices on one platform. We decided to explore Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Cloud to consolidate our accounting processes and make sure that all the MIS activities move through a single source of truth for business decisions. Before this, we faced challenges with updating our technology and spent a lot of time and resources maintaining records manually, which resulted in delays in closing books. All these challenges drove us to use the modern ERP Cloud.

We wanted all decisions regarding financial activities at CACTUS to be data-driven. With Oracle ERP Fusion Cloud, we had access to a real-time and highly customizable dashboard. Also, we no longer have to worry about updates. Since the platform is auto-updated, we are assured that we are always working with the latest version of the product and don’t have to depend heavily on vendor support. The cloud solutions allow scalability and accessibility across all the locations we are present including current COVID times where teams are working from home.

The benefits you have seen post ERP Cloud implementation

As I mentioned earlier, we were facing the challenge of closing our books on time. With the ERP Cloud, that is no longer an issue. We now save four days in a month in closing books, with lesser efforts, which is significant.

Also, consolidation of the balance sheet, which used to happen very irregularly through the year, now happens every month. My team is more confident and more focused, as they no longer need to spend time on manual tasks, which is taken care of by the system. We have several bank accounts and now we can reconcile them through the cloud.

Our next goal is to set up Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS)—so that we can move all planning and budgeting activities to the cloud. This will allow us to provide a more sustainable, robust, and transparent system of planning and budgeting for the organization.

Soon after moving to the ERP Cloud, we rolled out a purchase order process. Before this, we’d see instances of duplication of expense booking, accidentally making payouts to vendors without proper approvals or incorrect payments.

But now, all transactions go through the predefined workflow, rules and proper approvals are defined on the cloud. Our transaction processing is more accurate now. Earlier, bank reconciliations did not happen through the system and we were not certain if our checks and balances were effective. But now, with reconciliations happening through the system, inconsistencies or inaccuracies have been eliminated.

Streamlining the processes

Our engagement with the ERP Cloud allows us to sustain growth in volumes without feeling the need to add people to manage the additional volume. The system eliminates duplication in the effort. We were also able to restructure the team such that all activities can be managed with the existing workforce and the system.

What we do is streamlining the process whereby the same team can deliver higher output, thereby reducing the need for additional hiring for transactional activities.