One important advantage of cloud solutions is often overlooked: they enable companies to react quickly and flexibly to new regulatory conditions.
Particularly in the case of tax laws and customs law, companies have to contend with the fact that the regulations can change in a very short time, forcing them to adjust their own accounting systems. And then there is the complexity of the material. Especially when it comes to proprietary developments, incorporating altered regulations into the software takes a lot of time and effort for on-premise systems. Oracle’s PaaS cloud (Platform as a Service) in contrast provides customers with tools and ready-made solutions for converting the IT in the shortest time. Compared with proprietary systems, these offers are also characterised by being more user-friendly and faster to put into operation.
A good example is the Brazilian subsidiary of Burger King. When the South American country changed its electronic invoicing laws for directly levied taxes, the company ran the risk of having to pay five million US dollars in fines if it did not succeed in adapting its own systems to the new legal situation in the shortest possible time. Using Oracle’s cloud platform – and above all the Java and Oracle database cloud services – it was able to implement the requirements of the tax authorities and adjust its proprietary accounting systems to the new compliance rules within only three days. According to Burger King, a pleasant side effect were savings of 50% compared to the previously used solution and 60% lower IT costs.