“Cloud” has flourished into a major buzzword in business circles – and this is one instance where, yes, you should believe the hype.
As more and more businesses form, the competition for your ownenterprise will become tighter. Thisputs the onus on you driving efficiency improvements.
You might wonder how you could do this with relatively few financial resources at your disposal. Cloud technology is one answer; it is not only affordable but also rich in practical benefits.
You can regularly back up crucial data
On a weekly basis, your company is likely to spend hours producing important documents and accounts. However, this data could too easilybe lostif you fail to back it up.
Remembering to back up data might initially look like a tedious addition to your already long list of responsibilities. However, you can set up a cloud backup service to automatically copy files to an online server and so save yourself having to remember to transfer these files manually.
Emails can be synchronised across various devices
As business-friendly devices have grown in both number and variety over the years, this has put pressure on companies to find software capable of working seamlessly across devices.
For managing emails, a cloud-based service such as Microsoft’s Exchange Online can prove very useful. That’s because this kind of service will synchronise everything across your whole range of devices. Whether you look at your main PC, laptop or smartphone, you will see the same emails.
Store your files in the cloud, too
Though we have already highlighted why you ought to store data backups in the cloud, you and your workers might still be in the habit of storing the primary copies on the premises.
This practice can feel antiquated when you consider that, with business trips potentially often taking you away from the bricks-and-mortar office, you would be denied access to the on-premises storage, too. Cloud-stored files, however, are accessible from various online-ready devices.
Furthermore, as pointed out in this Tech Donut article, this data won’t be lost even if your devices fall to that fate. After all, the data will be on a secured, remote server – not on any of your machines.
You can save money on bulky IT equipment
Using a cloud computing solution will enable your company to trim its financial expenditure on such IT hardware as network servers which your firm would otherwise maintain in-house.
The savings can be ongoing. For example, your company would be able to lower its spending on energy bills. Outsourced IT support would also become less financially demanding – as, the fewer pieces of equipment in that office, the less that can go wrong.
You would be future-proofing your business
By transferring more of your corporate operations into the cloud, you would be tapping into a veritable spirit of innovation. It has been estimatedthat, by 2020, 80% of small businesses’ computing will be cloud-based, as Inc.reports.
Therefore, if you run a small business which makes a transition to the cloud, you can prevent your firmfalling behind in its ability to capitalise on emerging features. With cloud technology, open source innovates at a faster pace than it does on traditional server hardware.
Even world-classsolutions are within financial reach
Whether you want to utilise a public cloud or hybrid cloud, you can benefit from an architecture allowing your company to reach impressive levels of both utilisation and efficiency.
Over time, your company can increasingly say goodbye to having to contend with expensive, proprietary technology. Cloud technology, by contrast, is low cost and enables hyper-efficient capabilities. Hence, if you switch to the cloud, your corporate spending can reap better results.
Cloud-based financial forecasting can mean 200% better efficiency
Of course, your objective with spending is to ensurethat the returns are maximised. While you can never be certain that a particular round of financial expenditure will generate the kind of results that you want, financial forecasting can ease your judgement of what and where to spend.
The cloud consultancy firm RedPixie highlights the example of real estate company Telereal Trillium. In not only transferring Telereal Trillium’s financial modelling application to the Microsoft cloud computing platform Azure but also re-platforming it there, RedPixie produced great results.
After implementing financial forecasting in the cloud in this way, RedPixie noticed that Telereal Trillium’s IT team became 200% more efficient. Through allowing RedPixie to transfer your own firm’s financial forecasting efforts to the cloud, you can create conditions for more efficient forecasting.
