We agree that cloud computing could be your ticket to axe costs, enhance business process efficiency, and get your business act together. Did you know, however, that you could further cut costs while actually using the cloud? If only you could approach the cloud in a particular way, you’d further tweak your margins, bring down your costs further, and still have everything you’d come to expect in a cloud. Here’s how you can go about it:
Pin Priorities. Act from there
Different businesses have equally varying needs. As such, the cloud approach isn’t viable for every business function. That’s why it’s critical to set your priorities first. For instance, data security could be your greatest concern. Perhaps, it’s the speed of business process implementation. To get the most from the cloud, the equation begins with your priorities. State what you want clearly, and then look for resolutions on the cloud.
Implement. Test. Implement. Repeat
Never jump into the water with both feet and your head in at the same time. As for most things in business, testing and solution trials can save tremendous administrative headaches, costs, and business burns. If you choose to take your business functions such as marketing, sales, finance, payroll, analytics, and HR to the cloud, start with a habit of phase-wise implementation, test your business processes on the cloud, and then extend projects. We all did hear about breaking larger projects into smaller, achievable parts, didn’t we?
Set ROI fever about
Some business functions lend themselves difficult to trace your return on investments. Yet, everything in business is about numbers. Did you just move your sales and marketing to the cloud? Could you do a cost-benefit analysis and then track processes to link to your ROI? How does moving your finance and accounting to the cloud benefit your business in numbers? If HR and payroll gets to the cloud, what are your cost savings and resulting profits exactly? Do the numbers, and you’ll be glad you did.
Scale up, but at what cost?
Business is all about leverage. If you talk about leverage, a business has to scale up. The question is: Will your cloud service scale up with your business? What about the ease with which your chosen SaaS solutions scale up, for instance? Let’s take the case of data storage. If you had to scale up your business – and decidedly store more data than ever – how do you factor in the redundancy? What about the increasing costs of data storage along with your business? You should be able to mark the potential costs over time and potential cost overruns.
Are you looking about carefully? How much care goes into choosing your cloud solutions? How do you play this game?
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