Put simply, cloud solutions enable you to work any time, any place. You don’t need to be in the office to edit that document and you certainly don’t need to be sat at your desk to send an email.
The days of being wedded to an office are fading fast for many businesses and new technology means that it is easier than ever to finally wave goodbye to clunky servers and get up and running from the spare room/ kitchen table/ local coffee shop.
But, practically, how does moving my business to the cloud enable my team to work more flexibly?
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Work anywhere in the world
The first most obvious benefit to cloud technology is that it enables staff to work literally wherever they are. Instead of needing to access the office network to read emails, read documents and edit work, services like Microsoft 365 just require a little online login and you’re good to go. Plus, you don’t even need to be online because Microsoft apps enable downloads and offline working. So, if you know you’re going to be away from the wifi for a bit, just save some work and sync it again later.
Use a device, any device
The flexibility of working on the cloud also means you don’t necessarily even need to be using your work computer. If you are suddenly stuck at home due to a broken car (or a pandemic), you can just hop on the internet on your personal device and get access to all your work. And if you need to suddenly check a document on your phone on the way to an important meeting, that’s no problem either.
Ditch the physical server
Until cloud technology came along, it was pretty hard to run a business without a server. And to house those big black boxes, you needed an office or at least somewhere to keep it. Not anymore! Now you can host your entire server in the cloud, which means you don’t even need to house that hefty machine yourself; Microsoft can do it for you. It is much more secure too because data is encrypted, held across multiple sites (should one location suffer an outage) and you can set the permissions of what staff can access.
Access what you need when you need it
Gone are the days when you’d have to buy pricey software up front. Most major software tools offer cloud services now, which means instead of paying a heap and installing a sluggish bit of software on one single PC, you pay a subscription and then have access to that tool any time, any place. Plus, the subscription basis allows for fluctuations in the business because you can subscribe and unsubscribe as your team alters in size.
Recover from a disaster at record speed
Should disaster strike and all your business data disappears into some unpleasant ransomware attack, cloud backup and disaster recovery tools don’t just rescue your data, they will also see you bounce back in record time. These tools can click in, in a matter of minutes, so staff can make themselves a cup of tea and then get back to work without a second thought.
Chat to colleagues
It’s great to work in the same office as your colleagues for many reasons, one being that you can simply walk across the room and have a chat about something you’re working on together. When you’re working remotely, communication technologies come into their own. Whether it’s a private chat with a colleague or a large group meeting, tools like Zoom and Teams are invaluable. A cloud hosted phone system is also a major help here, enabling users to take and make calls from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection. It beats having to sit at your office desk to answer the phone.
There is no doubt that moving to the cloud makes business more flexible but it still requires some expert advice as there are a number of considerations - like software useage and internet speeds - that need to be ironed out first. Got a question? Get in touch! We have moved 100s of businesses to the cloud and would be happy to advise.
