Most of us interact with a cloud-based service at some point during the day—whether it’s buying a song on iTunes or sending photos to a friend via Google Docs. If you’re using the cloud in your personal life, why not in your small business? It’s not just a techie thing—small businesses just like yours are operating cloud-based services every day. So should you!

Moving day

While switching to a cloud-based software is a lofty goal, keep in mind that it’s not only attainable but it will keep in line with a growing trend. And the benefits will be numerous, from better organization to increased collaboration and more access to better data. All it takes is a bit of analyzing and adapting.

You are here

Start your cloud migration by analyzing your current model. Look behind the firewall to see your current security configurations. Engage your IT team to find out what is working—and just as importantly, what is not working. Ask your employees what data could help them be more efficient in their jobs. This is your starting point and you can only go up from here.

What to expect

Once you migrate your business, understand that the way your employees work will change. And for the better. Now that information is all centrally located in a cloud-based system, team members can access and update data from anywhere, at any time. Your team can collaborate and truly act as just that—a team.

For instance, in the world of online project management, it’s much more effective for team members to post comments or make other changes in real time. Those employees who used to send e-mail progress updates daily can now use that time to increase productivity elsewhere, since all the project information is already visible to the entire team. While you may not be able to view everything in your inbox the way you used to, the benefits of a shared workspace (faster more agile processes, for one) are huge.

Will all of these changes cause a bit of a cultural upset? Perhaps in the beginning. But we all have the same goal at the end of the day: Get our work done as efficiently as possible. Who can argue with that?

Onwards and upwards

What do small businesses have to look forward to in adopting cloud-based systems?

A more organized team? Check.
Better collaboration between employees? Check.
More access to better data? Check. And that’s about as good as it gets—for a business of any size.

Let us know how your business uses cloud-computing. We’d love to hear!