The recent technological advancements have allowed small businesses and start-ups to access powerful tools which once would have been beyond their reach. Cloud computing has made it easier than ever for SMBs to perform their day-to-day accounting tasks, irrespective of their location, as long as they have an Internet connection.
There is no doubt that moving your business process to the cloud has many benefits like easier collaboration, reduced business costs, flexibility, high security, and improved scalability.
OfficeTools is a practice management solution which helps tax and accounting firms with billing, project management, staffing, workflow management, and time tracking.
Moving OfficeTools to the cloud is a great way for companies to make a transition to a platform which offers much more than compared to the local setup.
Given today’s evolving work environment, OfficeTools hosting provides many benefits for businesses of all sizes. Here are the top nine benefits:
1. Enhanced Security
Most SMBs and entrepreneurs are worried about the security when hosting their OfficeTools software on the cloud. However, cloud computing limits the risk of data loss if the hardware is stolen or lost.
As the data and files are stored in the cloud instead of on the hardware, businesses can easily access the data and can also restrict access where required, no matter what happens to their hardware.
Complying with data protection safeguards ranks high on a trustworthy cloud service providers’ list, especially when the industry is moving towards a significant change. Some of these security safeguards include multi-factor authentication, data encryption, firewalls, access controls, among others.
2. Cost-efficient
The bottom line for any company looking to implement new technology is whether it provides a good return on investment and value for money. One of the good things about hosting your OfficeTools on the cloud is that you would not need to buy hardware as everything is hosted on your cloud provider’s servers.
This implies that you can save a lot on the cost of hardware, physical security, and ongoing maintenance. Hosting OfficeTools on the cloud is probably the most cost-efficient method to use, maintain and upgrade.
3. High Availability
As firms become dependent on OfficeTools to run their key operations, downtime can have disastrous implications, both on finances and reputation. Server failure can have a serious effect, and getting back online may be a challenging and tedious process.
OfficeTools hosting, however, eliminates the probability of server failure triggering downtime. Cloud hosting provides consistent performance with guaranteed 99.99% uptime. As the clients are hosted on virtual machines, data can be easily migrated between the clustered server, in case any issue occurs.
4. Increased Collaboration
According to a study by Cloud Security Alliance, 79% of companies get regular requests from users every month to purchase more cloud applications with collaboration and file sharing being on the top of their requested cloud services.
This is because cloud hosting of OfficeTools makes collaboration and file-sharing easier. Not only it allows users to edit the files in real-time, but they can also access them from anywhere in the world. Thus, no matter where your team members are located, they can still work together.
5. Disaster Recovery
It is important for businesses of all sizes to invest in a comprehensive and robust disaster recovery program. However, for most SMBs with limited funding and expertise, making an investment in a disaster recovery program remains a distant dream. Fortunately, cloud technology has helped many small businesses to buck that trend.
According to a report by Aberdeen Group, small and medium businesses are twice as likely to adopt a cloud-based backup and recovery solution. It was also noted that hosting applications and tools on the cloud could help companies save time and help them avoid huge upfront costs in servers to hold backup data.
6. Scalability
Different businesses have different IT requirements – a large company would not have the same IT requirements as a small company. OfficeTools cloud hosting is a great solution as it allows companies to quickly and efficiently scale up or down according to their business demands.
OfficeTools hosting is perfect for companies with fluctuating bandwidth demands. If the business demands an increase in capacity, one can easily scale up without investing in physical infrastructure. Such agility can minimize various in-house operational issues and provide firms with a real competitive advantage.
7. Quality Control
There are some things which are unfavorable for the success of a business such as inconsistent and low-quality reporting. With cloud hosting of OfficeTools, all the information is kept in one place and in the same format. When many users are working on the same file, the cloud makes it easier to prevent inaccuracies, maintain consistency in data and have a clear view of revisions and updates.
Whereas, dealing with data in silos may lead to users unintentionally saving different versions of documents, causing confusion among users and diluted data.
8. Increased Reliability
With a managed service platform, hosting your OfficeTools on the cloud is more reliable and consistent as compared to in-house infrastructure. Third party cloud providers offer an SLA (Service Level Agreement) which assures round-the-clock support and 99.99% availability.
Companies can take advantage of the massive pool of IT resources and quick failover mechanism – in case a server fails, OfficeTools can easily be transferred to any of the available servers.
9. Environmental-friendly
As you move the OfficeTools to the cloud, you would not need to own a server and can significantly minimize your carbon footprint. Also, you would not need the power to keep the servers cool and the data center space which needs to be lit.
In fact, there are more environmental benefits that the cloud offers. As you move your OfficeTools to the cloud, cloud provider can make use of energy in a more efficient way as compared to when they are hosted in-house. Thus, the cloud reduces the overall impact on the environment.
Want to know more about OfficeTools Cloud Hosting? Contact our Solutions Consultant at 855-223-4887.