While cloud computing and the services they deliver have made great strides in the past five years, companies continue to question the validity, value, and veracity of applications deployed in the cloud. The number of myths and new misconceptions continues as companies seek to improve performance and flexibility to meet business demands and drive revenue.
Recent research from McKinsey & Company found, “For the most part, this delay in cloud adoption does not stem from a lack of ambition. Many company leaders have encountered major roadblocks along their path toward cloud or have gotten cold feet once they questioned its impact on costs, security, latency, and more.”
Furthermore, “Conversations with hundreds of CEOs and CIOs have revealed a consistent set of myths that lead to these roadblocks and questions, hampering progress and adoption. Companies that have effectively counteracted these myths are the ones that have derived the greatest rewards from their move to the cloud.”
What are the top myths and what can be done to resolve them?
This blog covers three myths Model N has researched and experienced over the past few years with its life sciences customers.
Myth #1: Our Business Won’t Be As Agile
As the Life Sciences industry is faced with increased pressures from new regulations, fierce competition, mergers and acquisitions, and growing demands for price reductions and transparency. Success means you must be agile and quick to respond to these industry and market changes. By transitioning to the cloud, IT teams can refocus on supporting the business and capitalizing on opportunities for innovation while maximizing their skills. Teams focused on pricing, compliance, regulatory, incentives and rebates have current information tied directly to business goals and KPIs.
Myth #2: We’ll Lose Control of Regulatory Compliance
Life Sciences companies consistently report steep costs to stay compliant with regulatory requirements at the federal and state level. Costs in terms of money and resources coupled with fines for missing deadlines or incorrectly reporting are huge, and regulations are constantly changing as the healthcare industry evolves. Companies with non-cloud solutions require many internal and external resources to implement periodic upgrades as well as technically and functionally to test and mitigate financial and regulatory risks.
These regulatory change response upgrades have traditionally been built and delivered for every customer as a Regulatory Update Pack (RUP). It’s estimated there is an average of two RUPs per year are consumed by companies and this increases the burden on internal resources and risk with customized delivery for on-premise implementations. Using a cloud solution provides access to monthly RUPs that are technically tested and certified for the latest regulatory requirements.
Myth #3: It Will Introduce New Disruptions and Change
As the saying goes, there’s nothing permanent except change. However, change management in Life Sciences is not easy. Laced with outdated processes and technologies it makes it difficult for manufacturers to customize materials without numerous review cycles. Also, content often lives in siloed locations with different teams and in different systems, creating more inefficiencies.
With cloud solutions in place, they minimize maintenance and change versus on-premise platforms that require periodic upgrades, patches, and customizations. Add to this scope changes, budget allocations, augmenting staff for implementation and testing, and re-training the business on new technology. Utilizing cloud offerings provides predictable updates. These updates are automatic and incremental and not giant leaps.
There are many other myths associated with moving to the cloud that require review and demystification. At Model N, we continue to make significant investments in cloud innovation and offer new features and functionality designed to reduce revenue leakage, streamline processes, and improve compliance in life sciences companies. With Model N Cloud, you can frequently add new updates, features, and modules without major upgrades or customizations.
To learn more about Model N’s cloud solutions for managing revenue, Revenue Cloud, go here. To read Model N cloud customer success stories, click here.
