Leveraging the cloud has become a fast and more cost-effective way for companies large and small to streamline HR processes and scale services as they expand, says global management consulting firm Accenture in a new report.

With the cloud you can upgrade and integrate new applications in a matter of months rather than years, continually evolving and delivering new services across the entire workforce and employee lifecycle at speed.

It’s time for HR to expand cloud capabilities to create the next generation of HR and Talent Management and meet the needs of the workforce of the future. Leveraging the cloud allows you the agility to balance global efficiency with local workforce compliance laws.

Unleashing the power and potential of global talent

Your workforce is your organization’s most valuable asset. Yet unleashing the power and potential of the global talent base goes far beyond just hiring the right people. How can you balance your priorities to include acquiring, developing and retaining talent, while responding to employees’ demands for engaging and easy-to-use self-service, collaboration and mobility? Designed for use by everyone in the organization—from business leaders to managers to employees and HR professionals—cloud digital HR solutions address today’s complex workforce challenges.

Cloud enables innovation and flexibility

With the vendor in charge of evolving the technology, it becomes relatively quick and easy for HR to adopt new tools and functions as they are implemented, compared to having to upgrade and implement on-premise solutions. Vendors may introduce new tools as often as every three months, as opposed to the typical multi-year in-house improvement cycle. In addition, vendors often allow companies to scale their computing power up or down as needed. Thus, the cloud can be an important enabler of innovation and flexibility to withstand market volatility and changing business needs.

Cloud 2.0 “Platform-as-a-Service”

Looking beyond "Software-as-a-Service" (SaaS), cloud providers now offer "Platform-as-a-Service" (PaaS) capabilities. That is, they provide a platform that can accommodate a changing variety of applications. This approach makes it possible to have an ecosystem of collaborating companies using the platform to create new solutions. – TradeArabia News Service