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Most small businesses and independent freelancers need to manage business information between a small group of users. They need simple solutions without the cost of enterprise cloud vendors. Some of the popular options include Google Apps, Zoho Solutions, Dropbox, SalesForce and Box.com. While they all compete at in the enterprise cloud market, they also compete to win small businesses too, offering prices from FREE to hundreds per month.
How do you know when to make shift to clouds business tools, like cloud storage? If you are getting everything done, that is great. But, could you be operating faster, more efficiently? Here are some signs that will tell you it is time to change over to better collaborative tools.
Sending Emails With Revision Attachments
If you find yourself sending too many e-mails back and forth, just for revisions, file sharing tools are needed pronto. Instead of e-mailing revisions back-and-forth, you can simply edit and upload documents to be sent to everyone’s devices.
Thinking Of Upgrading IT Infrastructure
With cloud solutions, small business owners do not have to invest in heavy IT infrastructure. Saving money, they can easily store information in the cloud and pay for additional space to scale their needs. In addition, the owner saves on technology operating and maintenance costs.
Delivering Late On Deadlines
If the team is struggling to keep up with work, it could mean the business needs better processes or network services. Delivering late can be an alert to implement project management software. This is available or easily integrated with many cloud solutions mentioned above.
Research Takes Too Long
When was that meeting? Where is the client’s number? Did they receive the latest update? Sync calendars, contacts, tasks and schedules can help small teams deliver quickly. These updates help keep everyone on the same page.
Losing Consistency
If employees find themselves reformatting or converting information frequently, it is probably because different platforms and devices are being utilized. Cloud platforms can help eliminate these nuances, allowing for a BYOD or Bring Your Own Device environment (a very hot mobile software market). Employees also gain productivity from being more comfortable with their own devices.
Not Enough Time For Meetings
Cloud collaboration tools can help development teams manage their schedules. With many collaboration tools including group calendar features, you can view when is the best time to schedule meetings. This way, you can actually do all the positive meeting openers you have been wanting to do. With online calendars for groups, your team can increase meeting productivity.
Collaborative tools allow teams to operate more productively. If you are experiencing any of the signs mentioned above, maybe time to use a cloud based collaboration solution. It will help take you and your company to the next level.
Free Collaboration Tools
If you identified with any of the collaboration issues mentioned above, it is definitely time to invest in some new collaboration tools. However, you do not necessarily have to invest money in anything. There are plenty of free collaboration solutions, like Slack and Trello, that can improve day-to-day operations for you. Top collaboration tools, like Mural or GoVisually, are offered for free. Why not consider giving them a try? These free collaboration apps will definitely not hurt your business.
Is there anything stopping you from using cloud solutions and other unified communications improvements? Is there something that you don’t understand? Are you still unsure about your needs? Please let us know below we will do our best to help you out.
Image from http://www.britopian.com/2012/08/06/i-dropped-the-drop-in-dropbox/
