Why should small businesses use the cloud?
Mobility
Cloud computing lets your small company staff operate at work wherever they are. For example, let’s say your CFO is at the airport and needs to send a large financial report to your team quickly. She can do it with almost any mobile device.
Cloud mobility also lets small firms offer flexible work arrangements so employees can enjoy a better work/life balance. Of course, being more flexible with worker schedules will help you to retain your team, so that’s a win, too.
Another benefit: Working from anywhere allows you to recruit staff from any part of the country if you like. In addition, not every person needs to be located in your city if everyone has cloud-based work access.
Fewer capital expenditures
There was a time when making sure you had a robust IT system at your small company meant spending tens of thousands of dollars on IT hardware and software. This substantial cost often prevented small businesses from growing.
But cloud services are often based on a subscription model, so businesses can simply pay by the month based on their size. If your company grows, you merely pay the cloud server company more, as your bandwidth and storage increase.
Also, your workers don’t have to spend time setting up and maintaining servers anymore, so you can have them devote all their energy toward critical work for customers.
More collaboration
Today the typical workforce is more diverse and often dispersed. But because your data is maintained in the cloud, the physical distance between team members doesn’t matter.
This can be especially helpful when your people work on projects in which deliverables need to be finished by a team through a process of real-time collaboration.
When you have data stored in the cloud, each team member can take control of the task from where the last person left off. This improves collaboration between workers so a small company with a limited staff can manage the workload.
Improved security
Cloud-based servers are maintained in one physical location. As a result, it’s more convenient to protect the central database from cybersecurity threats than information stored in many places.
In addition, if someone loses a laptop, tablet, or cell phone used for logging in, your company data is safe from prying eyes. The employee just needs to change a password.
Enhanced scalability
Usually, small companies that want to grow have to purchase more IT equipment to support additional team members. If the company is forced to downsize due to an economic downturn, however, that equipment is a sunk cost.
A cloud solution is easier to scale up or down as the needs arise. For instance, your IT employees will simply create new login accounts if you need to scale up. And when a worker leaves the company, the login is just removed from the cloud, so your data remains secure.
Ensures business continuity
Unlike large firms that may have the financial resources to handle significant shocks, small businesses are more vulnerable to economic forces. A simple weeklong shutdown may be all that’s necessary for a small company to go out of business.
Cloud computing offers small firms excellent business continuity at a relatively low cost. Whether the disruption is attributable to financial issues or natural causes, your company can avoid certain common problems with its data in the cloud.
If you run a small company, you should consider the benefits of cloud solutions to improve your operations. Why should you hassle with deploying on-site servers if you can get the same service in the cloud at a fraction of the cost?
