The use of cloud technology by corporations has mushroomed in recent years. As the concept of cloud has gained greater acceptance at a consumer level, companies have increasingly recognised the benefits that cloud-based systems can bring to their businesses.

As a result, many have moved away from technology which is installed in-house and instead have adopted systems like Salesforce.com for customer relationship management and NetSuite for ERP.

Yet while the use of cloud technology has become mainstream elsewhere in the corporate environment, the areas of finance and treasury have tended to lag behind. All too often the CFO is the last person in the organisation to take their technology into the cloud.

Barriers to adoption

With cloud technology becoming a mainstream option for other corporate functions, why are CFOs holding back?

For one thing, they tend to be more risk averse than their peers across the organisation. The CFO …