As an equity principal, partner, director or business owner, you know that continuous, steady growth is an essential part of success. When you’re ready to get serious about scaling your organisation, several vital activities must happen.
Documented workflows, systems and processes, streamlined hiring, onboarding and training, well-oiled marketing systems and more top the list. One key but often overlooked element of scaling success that can make or break your efforts is leveraging technology to enhance operations quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively.
One resource potentially necessary for growth is the “cloud”. The “cloud”, which has for some time integrated with numerous automation platforms and now supposed AI tools, giving it more capabilities than ever before, allows you to streamline and automate your operations without large, unnecessary capital investments.
In this article we’ll cover what the “cloud” is, the major benefits you should take advantage of and how you can use it to grow your organisation without overspending.
The “cloud” is simply a someone else’s hardware and software that you “rent” space on that gives you remote, on-demand access to resources, including data storage, over the Internet instead. With these capabilities, your firm doesn’t need to invest in its own hardware or software licenses, allowing you to pay only for what you use when you use it.
Software and hardware can be expensive, making this is a great solution for boutique law, accounting or financial services firms in growth mode, until you reach a certain size. What size that is can depend on your growth objectives and how fast you get there.
How can the “cloud” help your organisation? Here are 5 benefits to consider:
- Economies of Scale – As mentioned, with most cloud-based programs you can expand the services as your firm or business grows. When revenue increases and you take on more clients, you can choose to upgrade your services or invest in new features or capabilities, so you never pay for more than you need at the time. It takes only a few clicks from an administrator.
- Enhanced Collaboration – In today’s modern world, we need real-time access for collaboration, no matter where our employees are. Cloud-based services can typically be accessed anywhere in the world on any device by multiple members of the team simultaneously. This allows for colleagues to work on projects together even if they aren’t in a physical office or are in different time zones, increasing productivity all around.
- Increased Automation – You can save money and your employees’ time by having cloud-based programs automate certain repeatable tasks. Some of these can include such things as mundane data entry between different systems. It also helps ensure a consistent client or customer experience by allow you or your team to create repeatable systems. Most equity principals, partners, directors or business owners don’t know how many tasks they can automate or how much money and time they can save until they have an IT professional review their technology.
- Faster Access to Resources – With the “cloud”, your employees no longer have to wait for extensive downloads or installations. Most services are readily available, making it easier and faster to get work done.
- Enhanced Disaster Recovery – Your IT professional or IT company should have multiple backups of your data that is properly secured from deletion by hackers or disgruntled employees, so if something goes wrong, it will be quick and easy to get you back up and running.
Cloud-based systems are a great resource for business owners who want scale. They can be easy to use, simple and flexible to expand, cost-effective, great for collaboration, than other programs and much more.
If you think you’re not harnessing all the power that the “cloud” provides, you’re probably not. The best next step is to have an IT professional do an in-depth review of your current system to find the areas of opportunity in your law, accounting, or financial services firm.
We offer a FREE IT Assessment, where we’ll extensively review your system and sit down with you to review what should be done differently to save you money and enhance your firm operations. If you’re serious about scaling and want to do it the right way, so you avoid making a big expensive mistake. Then click here to book an IT Assessment with our team or call our office on (08) 6244 2556 to get a meeting scheduled.
Alternatively, if you’re not ready for an assessment however want to know more about what you need to consider before moving your firm’s technology to a cloud environment. Then click here to download our free executive guide titled “5 Critical Facts Every Practice Manager, Partner or Director Must Know Before Moving Their Network To The Cloud”.
Inside we cover the unvarnished truth about the pros and cons of cloud computing, as well as common cloud migration "gotchas" that could cost you dearly in time, money and aggravation unless properly planned in advance.
My Info Tech Partner is a trusted IT Services and IT Support provider in Perth that specialises in helping the equity principals, partners, directors, and practice managers of legal, accounting and financial services firms from making big expensive mistakes with technology and ultimately, protect their livelihood.
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