8 ways SME’s can leverage cloud technology to grow their business

8 ways SME’s can leverage cloud technology to grow their business
August 2, 2021
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If your business is an SME, you often have minimal resources. You don’t have the luxury of spending big money testing out and paying for tools and solutions that you may not keep. To grow your business, surely you should choose solutions that are budget-friendly and effective from the start. Cloud technology can provide you with significant benefits to develop business without breaking your banks, and here we’ll share great ways you can leverage cloud technology to fuel your SME growth.

Focusing on what you do best

As a small or medium business owner, you don’t have to invest tremendous effort to maintain your infrastructure. As soon as you leverage cloud technology, you can outsource your tech stack to a reputable infrastructure provider. It can save you time, money, and effort in maintaining and protecting your data and infrastructure by yourself. You will have peace of mind knowing that all of your data is protected and supported.

You can choose any cloud provider for your needs, either Azure, AWS, or any other provider of your liking. If you are confused about which platform to choose or which cloud architecture suits your needs, you can always partner with an IT company that provides cloud consulting. So, you can plan and strategize which solution is right for your business.

Storing your business data

The cloud is an excellent place to keep all of your business data. By using cloud storage, you can reduce your reliance on a physical on-premise server. You also don’t have to worry about accessing the data when you go out and meeting up with your business partners and teams. All of your files are readily available where ever you go.

Having an advanced and low-cost phone system

A practical and reliable method of communication is a keystone of any successful business. The cloud-based telephone system is getting more and more in demand as cloud technology became a norm nowadays.

By leveraging cloud technology, you could turn any internet-accessible device into a potential phone. Giving you the flexibility to take calls from anywhere and anytime. Without the responsibility to install and maintain the hardware.

Cloud-based telephone system utilizes the internet to transfer voice signals between IP addresses. It forgoes the use of on-premise hardware, cutting down on the maintenance costs of a traditional telephone line system or a hybrid VoIP.

This gives you the chance to improve your communication system without a huge investment and complex installations.

Easy to collaborate and share files with your clients or teams

Before the mass uses of the cloud, businesses would spend a massive amount of cash to buy a costly server that is complicated to maintain. You can store data, but it is available to the specific location the server is located in.

Thanks to cloud technology, you can now access your data from anywhere in the world with an internet connection, virtually from any device. Collaboration between teams or clients is now easier as you can sort through many data no matter where you are.

For example, most of our clients using Microsoft Teams to collaborate and share files between their team members and clients. Microsoft Teams makes their communication much easier and more structured.

They can group their employees either by department, projects, or any other groups their want. Existing clients can be grouped on a permanent channel, and new clients can be invited as guests. They can share files with each other, but they can also track the progress of the project and many more features that have not been stated here.

Cloud technology does unlock things that we can’t do before.

Promote and create a flexible working environment

You can create a flexible working environment for your employees. Depends on your business nature, you can set up your business without a proper office to save up big time and use the robust collaborative tools to allow your employees to work from anywhere they want.  You also can recruit talented people across the world if you can’t find the right local talent.

Although flexible working environments do take different strategies to manage, many companies already prove this working environment can be achieved with the proper management strategy. It is a possibility to explore if your business nature is suitable for a fully flexible working environment.

Building solid customer relationships

Clients are at the heart of any business, and small businesses are no exception. If you want to be efficient and effective, you need to use intelligent tools such as customer relationship management (CRM) software.

CRM is like a swiss knife that can help businesses manage their customer’s data, tracking interaction stages, process incoming leads, send emails, track sales, automate processes, and more.

By leveraging cloud-based CRM, you can assign your team and allow them to access customer’s information from any device and anywhere they are. Ensuring you remain connected to customers, provide support, and maintain relationships through reliable systems and processes.

Keep the IT cost adaptable to your business growth

Cloud computing is flexible and scalable. It allows you to only pay for the resource that you use without significant up-front hardware investment. You can always start small and increase your usage gradually as your data and needs grow.

If you have seasonal spikes or unexpected events that temporarily demand more resources, the cloud can automatically accommodate them.

For example, you host your app or website on Azure, and it’s festive time, more and more people come to your website.

Usually, if you host it traditionally on a fixed package, the spike in traffic will make your website or app totally unusable. It is not the case with the cloud, as it can be set to scale automatically as the resource spikes and will go back to normal as it recedes.

It will save you from missed opportunities and keep you from spending more on upgrading your plan just because of temporary spikes.

Prevent the loss of company data with automatic backup

Loss of data is a considerable risk to every business of all sizes. It will affect your business operations, but in some cases, it can lead the company to go out of business. Scheduling, performing, and checking on backups can burden small businesses because backups are naturally prone to errors.

Traditional backup using CDs, auxiliary drives, or servers is vulnerable to localized disasters if you do not store it off-premise.

When you use cloud backup, you don’t need to worry about failed backup or missing the backup schedule because the data is off-site, and the backup task can be automated. The best thing is, cloud data centers give you robust enterprise-grade protection.

You can quickly restore your data from anywhere you need to in case of something happen.

Conclusion

The idea of the cloud puts big-company capabilities and capacity within reach, even with small-company resources and budgets. You can rely on state-of-the-art data centers with a vast team of highly trained expert staff that ensure your investment is secure. The competitive advantages of cloud computing, including the ease of moving data and applications, can make it an opportunity that’s too big to ignore.

At AXO, we offer cloud consultation and solutions to help businesses transition to the cloud environment easily. If you’re interested in learning more about AXO’s Cloud offering, please contact us or call us at 03-76222008.

AXO Technologies Sdn Bhd (1276407-U) is an innovative and thoughtful IT consulting firm based in Selangor, Malaysia. We help organizations solve their IT challenges by leveraging technology in their business process.

With our certified professional team, we strive to provide a better understanding and relationship with our customers.
+603 7622 2008info@axotechnologies.com
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