While a lot of people frown on the term ‘Social Darwinism’, this notion perhaps best explains one’s business success. You see, having the most money, the best business structure or even having the most loyal customer base all give you momentary advantage, but things can change. Even if you are in the safe spot at the moment, a revolution happens in the blink of an eye. Whereas some see this chaos that rules the business world as the abyss, others see it as an opportunity.
To sum up, in order to help your business grow, you need to be amongst first to adopt new ideas and implement them in your startup. A perfect example of this is looking into how cloud solutions for accountants can benefit your business.
1. Data Backup
For a small business, any setback (even a minor one) can result in a disaster. This is why, in the early stages of your company, data loss can be more dangerous than money or even client loss. The only way to prevent this from happening is to have a reliable backup system and this is where cloud gets extremely handy. Keeping all your work in the digital environment is much cheaper than buying flash or HDD drives every time you run out of space. Not to mention that the hazard of forgetting a password is much less likely than that of misplacing your data drive. Furthermore, such method of data backup is safe from natural disasters, malfunctions or even theft. Definitely something worth considering.
2. Working from Mobile
According to a recent statistic, almost 2/3 of the planet’s population has an access to a mobile phone. Moreover, according to Google, since 2015, there is a greater number of searches from mobile than desktop setups. Apart from personal use for information, communication or entertainment, to a lot of businessmen, their phone equals their office. With cloud, you would be able to access all of your business-relevant data with nothing but your phone. This means that even while on vacation or business trip, people at the office can still count on you.
3. System Automation
The greatest problem most SMBs face is a fact that they are terribly understaffed. Unfortunately, this makes them either hire additional people, which adds more expenses for their payroll, or outsource their business vital functions. On the other hand, cloud solutions provide you with a unique opportunity to completely automate your system and allow your website to do quite a bit of work for you. Take for example the event management industry. Instead of looking for a middleman to deal with tickets sales and distribution, you can simply install a WordPress event ticket system plugin on your website and never worry about this function again.
4. Information Sharing
Next thing we must discuss is the importance of information sharing in 2017. According to recent statistic, over 45 percent of workers in the US are telecommuting. This means that people working on the same project could be located on several different continents. Naturally, the first problem this meets is how can you make it all work? You see, instant messaging has made communication much easier and Skype conference calls are almost as good as the real thing, but what about the files? Most IM systems have a 25MB limit on the file you want to share, but with the help of the cloud, you won’t have a problem with this whatsoever.
5. Safer Information
During the early stages of Cloud computing, a lot of urban legends arose about the security flaws of this storage option. Even if some of them were true, cloud security came a long way since that. Today, it is much easier for physical copies of invaluable information to get lost or misplaced, than it is for anything that is stored on the cloud. Some of the greatest names in cloud computing even made a few challenges (with hefty prize pool) to hackers who could access the encrypted folder. Needless to say, such attempts met no success.
6. Planning Growth
Finally, the most important thing startups and SMBs fail to put into account is planning growth. Sure, some of the business moves you made are viable at the moment, but may not be sufficient in few years’ time. Luckily, cloud services are extremely scalable, which is one less issue to worry about when your potential expansion is in question.
Conclusion
As we mentioned in the introduction, the world of business is constantly changing and only the companies willing to adapt can survive this turmoil. What cloud has to offer are reduced costs, greater convenience in doing business and real-life digital workspace for your staff members to share. As always, those who embrace the cloud solutions in time will get a competitive edge, while those reluctant to do so will be left behind. The choice, however, is all yours.