The forecast suggests that large, medium, and small businesses from various industries and regions adopting cloud-first strategies. The providers help businesses to leverage cloud computing by providing various categories of hosted services – platforms as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) – over the internet on-demand.
According to Gartner.com, “The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 17.5 percent in 2019 to total $214.3 billion, up from $182.4 billion in 2018.”
Your small business can easily curtail upfront and ongoing infrastructural cost by availing the required computing resources – applications, services, storage, server, networks, and telephony solutions – based on the pay-as-you-go pricing model. Also, cloud computing helps you to keep the small business flexible, scalable, and secure in the longer run. There are also several reasons why your business cannot remain relevant, competitive and profitable without leveraging cloud computing.
10 Reasons Why Your Business Must Leverage Cloud Technologies Early and Fully
1. Access Compute Resources on Demand
You cannot run a business smoothly without combining compute resources according to various types of workloads. As noted earlier, cloud computing enables you to access a variety of computing services on demand. With the help of the cloud, your business can access the required compute resource without any delay or restrictions.
Also, your business is required to pay only for the compute resources and workloads used by it. It also eliminates the need to invest in an on-premise IT infrastructure by accessing cloud-based applications, services, and compute resources over the internet.
2. Promote Operational Agility
Customer preferences and industry trends keep changing from time to time. Your small business must improve operations and processes consistently to meet the emerging trends and changing customer demands. The flexible, scalable, and customizable nature of cloud-based technologies helps you to promote operational agility.
You can modify and fine-tune existing business processes and operations by scaling up and down the compute resources according to fluctuations in requirements or demand. The operation agility will help your small business to compete with large and existing businesses.
3. Keep Software Up-to-Date
The leading providers update software solutions at regular intervals to improve functionality, security, and usability. Both large and small businesses cannot boost business processes and operations without keeping their software applications up-to-date. The businesses need to deploy additional time and resources to update legacy or on-premise systems proactively. The cloud service providers enable businesses to avail new functionalities and enhance security by rolling out software applications frequently. Your small business can further access the most recent version of the cloud-based software applications over the internet without investing extra time and resources.
4. Implement Recovery and Backup Services
According to a study conducted by Spiceworks, “The majority of organizations have experienced an outage (i.e. any interruption to normal levels of IT-related service) in the last 12 months.”
The business or service outage makes businesses lose revenue, in addition to impacting customer experience and loyalty adversely. Many businesses these days speed up disaster recovery by switching to hosted or cloud-based solutions and services. In addition to ensuring business continuity, the cloud-based technologies further help back up both corporate and customer data continuously by overcoming constraints related to skill and resources.
5. Work with Remote Employees
Many small businesses and startups these days curtail recruitment and training cost by working with remote or work-from-home agents. In addition to reducing operational cost, remote employees also help small businesses to eliminate issues like employee attrition and work absences. As noted earlier, the users can access the applications hosted in the cloud and data stored in the cloud through the internet from anywhere. The small businesses can leverage cloud computing to work with remote or work-from-home employees regardless of their geographical location.
6. Foster Increased Team Collaboration
The cloud-based technologies enable enterprises to operate in a virtual environment. In addition to helping small businesses to work with remote employees, cloud computing also helps owners to foster increases in team collaboration. You can leverage cloud telephony solutions to facilitate seamless and uninterrupted communication between in-house employees and remote workers.
The cloud-based solutions even enable both in-house employees and remote workers to access and edit the same documents simultaneously. You can further boost the efficiency and productivity of employees using cloud-based office platforms provided by leading tech companies like Microsoft and Google.
7. Automate Customer Service Delivery
Many customers these days abandon a business or brand due to poor customer service experience. Your business cannot boost customer experience and promote customer loyalty without delivering customer service proactively. The cloud-hosted interactive voice response (IVR) systems help your small business to automate and expedite customer service by providing self-service options and automated attendant features. The self-service options enable callers to resolve customer service issues on their own without talking to an employee or customer support agent.
8. Maintain Business’s Local Presence
The digital communication technologies enable small business owners to sell their products to customers living in various regions. But you cannot increase the conversation rate without enhancing the business’s local presence in each targeted market. The virtual telephone numbers provided by cloud telephony service providers help you to enhance the business’s virtual presence by routing incoming calls to a variety of devices – mobile phones and softphones. Your business can leverage a virtual telephone number to build a local presence and communicate with the local customers without incurring international call charges.
9. Broadcast Campaign Messages in Bulk
Like large businesses, small businesses also need to run outbound calling campaigns to generate leads and increase conversion rates. But the small businesses often lack the resources required to connect with a large number of customers by deploying dedicated call center agents. The cloud telephony service providers help small businesses to broadcast pre-recorded voice messages to thousands of customers simultaneously without investing extra time, effort and money. Your small business must use voice broadcasting services to run marketing campaigns and conduct market research surveys by connecting with a large number of customers and prospects in a short amount of time.
10. Enhance Application and Data Security
According to InfoWorld.com, “The public cloud is more secure than the typical data center, and IT would get better security if it got past its prejudice against the cloud.”
Unlike on-premise and legacy software applications, cloud-hosted software solutions are designed with sophisticated security features. These service providers further keep software applications up-to-date to combat emerging security threats.
Also, the leading cloud service providers help businesses to enhance application and data security by keeping advanced security mechanisms in place. Hence, your small business can easily keep its systems and data secure by leveraging cloud computing.
You cannot keep your small business profitable and relevant in the long run without adopting a cloud-first approach. In addition to reducing infrastructural overhead, cloud technologies also help you to boost business processes and customer service quality. Hence, your small business must take advantage of cloud technologies early to reduce cost, increase revenue and boost customer experience.
