With all due respect to Mick Jones, it’s a complicated question. At first glance, both options seem scary. You’ve already got your operating plans and supply chain strategies figured out. You’ve got your processes nailed down. Your workflows are flowing. Everything is customized just the way you like it—and it wasn’t easy getting there.

So why would you change? Why would you interrupt what’s seemingly working? Why would you take on any risk at all?

• Because COVID taught us all lessons about the fragility of fewer suppliers, longer lead times, and just-in-time delivery.
• Because on-prem systems can’t keep up with new business models, new pricing structures, or new delivery mechanisms.
• Because the cloud, the pervasiveness of data, and the emergence of AI are creating massive opportunities for scale, speed, stability, and sustainability that you can’t compete without.
• Because your competitors are moving on, “with or without you” (to borrow a line from U2).

And mostly, because the risk of moving isn’t as real as it seems.

The true danger is staying on-prem. Avoiding the cloud means being left behind and being unable to meet customer demands, competitor capacity, and market changes. It means accepting irrelevance.

On-prem systems aren’t built to welcome new technologies, adapt to lightning-fast change, or keep up with the exponential data you’re creating. And while working with a hyperscaler might save you money, it’s still on prem, so instant innovation is still out of reach.

Simply put, if you want to get ahead, you’ve got to get to the cloud.

Eliminate the risk of disconnected solutions and inflexibility.

Every part of your operations should work together as a single, constant, digital process without breaks, gaps, or barriers between steps or teams. Data and workflows should work freely and continuously without manual intervention. All of that can happen on prem – until something changes. And something always changes.

Cloud ERP integrates all your operations processes—from design to manufacture and from delivery to service—with the rest of your business. So, when things change, you can reconfigure your solution (and your products, processes, and workflows) on the fly.

Eliminate the risk of out-of-date data.

Let’s say you have to reroute a shipment—now. Do you immediately and automatically have the PO, the expected lead time, the customer information, and all your operations data? In the on-prem world, you don’t, because the data doesn’t move as fast as your decision making needs to be.

Cloud ERP brings certainty to each delivery with deep, dynamic, instantly accessible information. So, AI can make immediate recommendations, and you can compress days of planning into a matter of seconds.

Eliminate the risk of ineffective supplier relationships.

Asking your on-prem tools to create a collaborative ecosystem across all your vendors all over the globe—and keeping it up to date as technology and your vendor lists evolve—is, well, asking a lot. On-prem systems simply aren’t meant to support that kind of collaboration.

Cloud ERP, on the other hand, allows you to not only build these kinds of relationships with every single supplier, but it also gives you clear visibility into every partner’s capabilities, capacity, and performance.

RISE to the reward.

Here’s what it comes down to: RISE with SAP offers you a clear, confident path to the cloud.

After thousands of successful migrations, RISE with SAP helps you compress the time it takes to get to the cloud with proven, tested, and clearly defined roadmaps. It keeps your core data and processes ready for new technologies as soon as they’re available. And it manages the day-to-day details, so your IT team doesn’t get distracted from future-focused thinking.

RISE with SAP eases your move to the cloud and erases the risk your on-prem systems now pose.

Safety in numbers.

We know this is a difficult decision, but just listen to what our customers have to say.

There’s no risk in learning more.

To find out how RISE with SAP can ease your concerns about cloud transformation—and how it truly transforms operations—take a look at this and join the upcoming webinar, Rise into the Future, where we will explore these concepts further and discuss practical strategies for implementation—to help you make your move into a cloud ERP enabled future.

And you’ll get your answer:

You should definitely go.

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