Why You Should Focus on Making Your Business Cloud Based
How many of you have a file cabinet filled to the brim with old or even current paperwork? Is your current account software locally stored on one machine? Do you keep important files backed up to an external drive AND securely stored in the cloud? Many of your business operations can be stored and accessed digitally to reduce the amount of physical paperwork, making your business data easier to access, and create a better workflow for your business operations.
Why a Cloud Based Business is Better
Whether your business is small or large, migrating your files to the cloud is no easy feat. However, given the proper handling and execution to make it happen creates a ton of benefits that your business with thrive from. This is important because:
Storing files in the cloud means they can easily be accessed, shared, and synced across multiple devices.
While a local backup on an external hard drive is great, having a cloud backup of your data means being able to recover that data in the event of a hardware crash or catastrophic mishap.
Many modern versions of programs you already use are now cloud based to be accessed from almost any device from your computer to your tablet and even your smartphone (Quickbooks, Office 365, etc.)
Employees are able to collaborate and share information with cloud hosting such as contributing to documents and effortlessly sharing files.
These advantages are hard to ignore given all of the current and upcoming technology that we have access to.
Other Advantages
Taking your business to the cloud comes with a lot of costs savings. Office expenses decrease the more you obtain and/or create your files digitally. Many vendors offer paperless billing and invoicing and you can do the same from your end. When cloud based software has an update, it is usually very seamless to update and start working with the latest version without interrupting your workflow. The biggest advantage in our opinion is being able to perform operations for your business without being on site. This is very hard to do without cloud based operations in place and can be very beneficial for your business and for yourself to access important files and documents from the comfort of a beach chair.
Factors to Consider
Although this is very advantageous for most businesses, moving to the cloud is not for everyone and it may not be cost effective at the moment either. The old saying can ring true in this situation: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” With that being said, it should be a major consideration for you to pursue but here are some action items to take to see if it’s right for your business:
Does moving to the cloud make sense for your business financially and operationally? Analyzing your current operations and seeing whether or not they would benefit from switching to cloud based services is the first thing you should look at.
Will you have a hard time migrating your current employees to a cloud based system and how intensive will training them on new systems need to be? Your current personnel will play a large factor in determining whether it is a good business move for you. You may have a team that is very flexible and/or is able to adapt quickly and easily or may need to dedicate more time training them or possibly hiring new personnel to handle certain systems.
Managing the security of a cloud based system has different requirements of a local based security system. It has great advantages but investing the time and resources in maintaining login credentials and other types of security access and levels should also be taken into consideration.
Every business is different but we hope we were able to provide you with some insight on how a cloud based business can be beneficial and some of the factors to consider before making any big decisions regarding moving to cloud based services.
