Impact of Cloud Computing Adoption on Marketing, HR, Finance, and Operational Performance: An Empirical Study of Indian Organizations

Abstract

 Cloud computing has become a pivotal digital infrastructure that transforms how organizations are executing marketing, human resource (Hr) as well as finance and operations functions. Although considerable literature has focused on cloud adoption as a singular IT phenomenon, a relatively limited number of empirical studies have been able to evaluate the performance implications of cloud adoption at the same time across various functional areas using a single organization sample. This paper focuses on filling that gap by empirically evaluating the effect of Cloud computing adoption (CCA) on four dimensions of organizational performance, which include Marketing Performance, HR Performance, Finance performance and Operational performance. A structured, validated questionnaire was used to collect primary data; the reliability of the data was determined by the Cronbach, alpha (all constructs = 0.77), and it was good considering the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value of 0.899 and significant Bartletts test of sphericity (= 608.42, = 0.001). Four hypotheses relating CCA to each of the performance dimensions were tested using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. All four hypotheses were supported (p<.001), with the strongest effect observed on Finance Performance (β = 0.47, R² = 0.221) and Operational Performance (β = 0.42, R² = 0.174), followed by Marketing Performance (β = 0.34, R² = 0.114) and HR Performance (β = 0.32, R² = 0.102). The results indicate that the performance dividends of cloud computing adoption are the strongest in finance and operations and somewhat less and still significant in marketing and HR. The paper presents a multi-purpose, comprehensive empirical model of assessing the value of cloud computing in organizations, as well as provides a set of implications to managers, IT decision-makers and policy makers that want to prioritize the investment in cloud across business functions.