Cloud Computing for Small Business: It’s About Time.

December 28, 2017

I talked to Canadian Business about cloud technology for small businesses. In this post, I discuss it further.

By Maureen McCabe

The small business owners I work with all point to “time” as the significant issue affecting their long-term growth. When I delve deeper, I often find that it’s not about having too much work to do, but it’s about what gets in the way of doing that work: the little tasks that eat into the day.

Here’s the thing, though: most, if not all, of those tasks could be automated if they were moved to the cloud. Not only would these small business owners not have to do them, but they would also be done better without the human element.

Big businesses have known this for some time, and many of them have moved most (if not all) their operations to the cloud. So, as a small business just getting your feet wet with cloud computing, here are four places to start saving time:

Customer Relationship Management, CRM

Rebecca Harris from CanadianBusiness.com interviewed me, and what I said last year remains true. Imagine a prospect reaching out to you, seeking information about your business, or perhaps requesting a copy of your eBook. Today, you would have to stop what you are doing, locate the necessary materials, compose an email, attach the file, and send it off.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to do that (maybe three minutes), but consider that it takes 25 minutes to get back into the swing of things after being distracted by something else. So now, that three-minute task actually costs you 28 minutes.

By migrating CRM to the cloud and with the correct responses lined up, you will not have to respond at all because the system will automatically pull the appropriate materials, pair them with the right message, and send them off. Twenty-eight minutes saved right there — and maybe a lot more depending on how many requests you get.

2. Meetings

A 2pm internal meeting actually starts at 1:55 because you have to walk from your office to the boardroom. Now imagine you have four meetings in a day. There are 20 minutes right there. Sure, the exercise may be worthwhile, but wouldn’t it be better to save that time by joining the meeting via a cloud-based video conference platform from your desk (or anywhere else for that matter)?

Setting up company-wide cloud-based communication lets you save those 20 minutes for your employees. And with work-life balance (read: leaving the office at 5 pm) being given greater importance, those 20 minutes make a significant difference.

3. Collaboration

You have an idea you want to share with your team. You email it out to get the ball rolling, and the chain starts to grow. By the time you get back to it, you have 15 emails to go through. And you have to keep jumping back and forth between emails to reference a point someone made about a point someone else made. Madness. And such a time waster — not just for you but for the person who then has to consolidate everything into a report.

Now consider a simple Google doc (yes, that counts as cloud computing). Put your initial idea in there, and everyone has access to it. They can add comments, incorporate their own ideas, and improve it in real-time.

To be fair, many people have issues with Google Docs, particularly as files grow in size. The cursor will often lag behind the text you write, which can be frustrating (much like watching a TV show where the actors’ voices don’t line up with their mouth movements).

In that case, a simple move to a cloud platform like Dropbox can help. Write your idea in a Word file and upload it to Dropbox for everyone to access.

4. HR

Small business owners wear many hats, and an HR manager is one of the more difficult ones. It takes time to sift through resumes, and a lot of time to find the right ones. Then, when you find the right person, there’s the issue of contracts, insurance forms, and other administrative details to attend to. And then, once they’re part of the team, you have to train them continuously. All this takes time.

But with a cloud-based HR platform, all of it’s automated for you. Resumes can be collected and filed according to role, and contracts and forms can be automatically sent out when needed. Additionally, training programs can be uploaded and accessed on demand by employees. That’s a significant amount of time saved for you to focus on your other CEO/CFO/VP of Sales and Marketing duties.

Cloud computing was MADE for small businesses.

Until recently, large enterprises led the charge primarily due to cost considerations. But like any technology, prices are dropping. As a small business, now’s the time to start experimenting with cloud solutions because, quite honestly, in three years you won’t have a choice.

If you’re having trouble knowing where to start or want to learn more about cloud computing

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