I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that moving to the cloud would reduce your IT costs, but did you know that it can impact infrastructure and HR costs as well?
Did you know:
- That in a recent IBM survey the organizations adopting cloud solutions are reporting almost double the revenue growth and nearly 2.5 times higher gross profit growth than their peer companies that are more cautious about cloud computing? Whew, that is a mouthful!
- That we are wondering what you're waiting for?
So this is not about following the new management fad, this is now about business survival; If you don’t stay ahead of the competition, you will forever be trying to catch up. I'm going to leave the other benefits like increased security, dependability, customer service, improved corporate culture and a “who’s best” comparison between Google, Microsoft and Apple Cloud Platforms for future blogs...(teaser), just going to stick to the bottom line; the bottom line. There are three main areas in which adopting a cloud strategy will greatly impact your profit:
#1: Reduced Hardware Acquisition and Maintenance and Software Costs: email server and email, office and OS software: this is an easy one:
- Take the number of employees you have that use your office software and multiply by $5 each/month and compare it to your present budget. That’s it. $5 each includes all of your office software (OS, email, spreadsheet, word processing, forms and presentation) and updates, your email server, and virus and spam protection. All updates are done off your computer so you will see the changes after they happen and there is no restarting computers for updates or expensive purchases when the OS becomes outdated (are you running XP? Ouch!) and Google Apps are easy to set up; I have very limited IT background and I set it up for my own company without a hitch and have been using it for 7 years.
- Now let's compare your IT capital and maintenance costs: The cost for a Chromebook is $269 and with a three year maintenance warranty of $149, this is all you need to budget for IT maintenance for three years which comes out to $11.70/month/user. We of course recommend keeping your existing hardware; cloud computing uses very little RAM, so even very outdated hardware will do fine until it dies, further beautifying your bottom line.
- VOIP: Eliminate your long distance costs. (Period).
- So, compare your email server and email, office and OS software, hardware acquisition and maintenance costs against $16.70/user/month or as low as $5/user/month until your existing hardware dies, and subtract your long distance charges. Chances are you haven’t only drastically reduced your cost centre here, but you are seeing a positive revenue when calculating the benefit of your long distance savings. Operational expenses turned into revenue, did that just happen? Who said accounting wasn’t fun?
#2: Team Productivity Gains; Yes we are just getting started...
- Your documents are available to your team on multiple devices so they can access them anywhere, anytime, with or without a data connection. So your team can be working on a phone, tablet, desktop, laptop or on a chromebook on a plane, on a train, or in a boat or in a car (I love green eggs and ham).
- Documents are shared, not emailed, so that means one document, no extra versions out there between team members
- Collaboration; google hangouts enable real time chatting, voice and video to work on documents together, wherever any member of your team is, whether they are on a plane...
#3: Biggest and last but certainly not least: Capital Savings through autonomous work forces, eliminating your business reliance on infrastructure. Yes all of it; buildings, office space, furniture etc:
- This is absolutely within the grasp of most companies right now, and the many who have moved to autonomous work forces are reaping the financial benefits not only from eliminating office space, but the positive increase in their corporate culture. If you are not moving in this direction you are losing an enormous opportunity with any team member that has administrative responsibilities like your accounting, B2B sales, marketing and merchandising departments. We will see a day where schedule and site-autonomous work forces will significantly reduce the need for office space, and the majority of office buildings will be renovated for residential use and the small remainder used for temporary day or hourly offices only. Utilizing temporary office space services in conjunction with strong Knowledge Management and Quality Management Programs will keep your team connected and apprised of their performance.
Adopting a cloud strategy is easier than ever before and is pretty well a “do it yourself” process. The benefits will not only greatly contribute to your bottom line, they will keep you ahead of your competition with customer service and corporate culture. At TRIAD we would be very happy to help you navigate through this and many other Business Performance initiatives, call us for a free consultation. http://goo.gl/hRtym6
#business #tools #logistics #marketing #merchandising #sales #warehousing #delivery #transportation #customerservice #humanresources #process #procedures #productivity #efficiency #culture #corporateculture #employeesatisfaction #environment #healthandsafety #profit #cloudcomputing #IT #informationtechnology #triadmlc
No comments:
Post a Comment