Three emerging trends in finance across Europe, Middle East and Africa

Dubai - Rapid change driven by huge appetite for technology-led innovations or new legal requirements

As 2017 unfolds, it has become a norm for industry leaders to drive predictions on future market outlook. With some major transformation programmes being implemented across key industries and government entities across the Middle East, this trend holds even more significance.
This very rapid change is driven by a huge appetite for technology-led innovations or - simply - new legal requirements.
Below are the top three trends that will dominate 2017:
Cloud leads the road to mass ERP adoption: The next massive wave of adoption will be ERP in the cloud as finance and supply chain lines of business start to not only see the immediate value of the cloud - such as faster innovation - but also that cloud offers a truly secure business environment.
The simplicity of the cloud can help organisations to easily digitise and improve core business processes and operations.
In addition, as we move to a post-oil economy, deploying the latest cloud innovations can accelerate development of new business models, processes and decisions.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that cloud is the perfect fit for a fast-changing world. It is the only consumption model that offers such a level of flexibility combined with quick innovation cycles.
GCC prepares for VAT: VAT will be incrementally deployed across Gulf countries in the near future. So all finance departments from large, midsize to small organisations will have to ensure that starting 2018 they have an updated system that fully complies with VAT requirements. Scenarios such as updating existing systems by activating the VAT function of ERPs or simply taking the opportunity to replace old systems with next-gen apps as we saw in Europe in the 2000s will be heavily prevalent.
However, we will also witness the emergence of a third scenario - cloud VAT services - that will allow quicker deployments while ensuring the company is always compliant with any legal change.
Intelligence in the context of business decisions: Artificial intelligence will be at the forefront of developing and managing enterprise applications in the near future. In the past we've used technology successfully to simplify the creation and access of information, and now we will soon turn to technology to democratise access to intelligence.
The writer is senior vice-president of applications for ECEMEA at Oracle. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.