IS CLOUD ALL OR NOTHING?

When it comes to cloud adoption, there’s largely two schools of thought on the best approach. The first involves migrating most - if not all - business functions in a large scale transformation project. The second involves shifting functions piece-by-piece as and when the need or desire to do so becomes apparent.

You want to enable organisations to pursue both strategies. Perhaps most importantly, however, you want to take the time to listen to the organisation and understand which approach would be the best fit for their unique business circumstances - even if your advice runs counter to their initial thinking.

Regardless of which strategy is pursued, making the choice to move business functions to the cloud provides multiple benefits to an organisation. Whether it’s an improved security posture, better disaster recovery and backup processes, increased flexibility or lower IT overheads, embracing the cloud can bring huge competitive advantages.

When it comes to SMEs, perhaps the greatest benefit of cloud computing is that a smaller company can leverage all the tools larger enterprises use without the upfront investment needed for on-premise enterprise computing equipment.

The flip-side of this coin is that larger enterprises can use new-generation tools to either replace or compliment their current investments. This helps large organisations compete with newer, more nimble entrants to the market - assuming of course they’re willing to make the leap.

No matter the size of an organisation, a full-scale transformation project can be daunting. Many organisations can fall into the trap of rushing into a complete IT overhaul without being completely aware of the internal skill sets or retraining required to make the project a success.

It is in these cases we’d advise a client to test the cloud waters first. Rather than migrate all functions at once, it could be more beneficial to embrace the cloud application-by-application. Below we’ve listed the most common business processes our clients migrate to the cloud, and outline some of the benefits of doing so. For the cloud-curious, these applications make the most sense to migrate first in order to introduce an organisation to cloud before exploring a more wide-scale transformation;

Web Facing Applications: Websites, content management systems, mobile apps and online commerce sites should be the first applications to consider migrating to cloud. Not only are these typically more modern, meaning migration is much simpler, but they’re also less essential to business than applications like ERP - if there’s any teething issues during the project, there is less disruption to business. Not only are these applications some of the simplest to migrate, but their performance can be greatly improved by shifting them to cloud as they typically require scalability to balance unpredictable online volumes - scalability that is both difficult and expensive to achieve on-premise.

Customer Relationship Management: CRM software keeps track of every aspect of the customer relationship from first contact throughout the entire lifecycle. A robust cloud-based CRM improves a business’ knowledge of its customers as all interactions are recorded and easily accessible; whenever a customer gets in contact, that customer’s history is available to the agent at the click of a button. Critically, cloud-based CRMs can extend this functionality to agents in the field as a smartphone with an internet connection can access all the same data as a computer terminal at HQ.

Human Resource Management System: HRM systems focus on the human component of your business. It encompasses everything from payroll and benefits planning, to talent acquisition and reporting. A cloud-based HRM system enables an organisation to confidently manage the changing nature of work, for example more staff wish to work remotely and gig economy workers are becoming more prevalent. A responsive system enables employees to more efficiently track and log their time, while the inbuilt analytics of these systems gives the HR team a better of insight of employee productivity.

The most important takeaway, though, is that cloud computing has something to offer almost every business. For some, it is leveraging powerful hardware, software, and services for a pay-as-you-go price. For others, it is a level of data security they could not achieve on their own. For developers, it is remote collaboration and multi-platform tools for creating, testing, and deploying highly available applications.

When considering cloud, it can seem intimidating. Not every organisation is ready to shift every application all at once, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Each business is unique and at a different stage of their cloud journey. Regardless of whether you’re ready to go all-in on cloud or would prefer to dip your toe in the water first, it’s important to find a partner who understands the specific outcomes your business wants to achieve and has the technical ability to help you achieve them.