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3 Things Your Business Shouldn’t Skimp On

Things Your Business Shouldn’t Skimp On

As a business owner, one of your ongoing challenges is the balancing act of keeping costs low while not limiting your growth and success. There are a few areas where it is okay to be tight fisted, but for some expenses, cutting corners will only hurt you. 3 of the main things your business shouldn’t skimp on are technology, marketing, and accounting.

Technology

At the core every business is their digital infrastructure and network of computers. Without functioning technology, your business will have a tough time reaching customers, keeping track of leads, and facilitating a smooth sales experience. Invest in a trusted and experienced IT partner. It’s not worth trying to manage it yourself or going with cheap, used equipment.

Cloud computing has also become increasingly popular. With cloud computing, your service provider does all the heavy lifting by setting up your network, running updates, and backing up all data. This sort of technology will be around for years to come and is worth the monthly cost to switch over to. Your business will benefit from more mobility and far less technical difficulties.

Marketing

When done well, marketing should serve to steadily increase your brand awareness and attract new leads more and more as time goes on. Some businesses are able to skate by on referral traffic for a while, but there always comes a time when the referral tap runs dry.

Investing in marketing is investing in the future of your business. It is not something that can be stopped and started and still expected to produce consistent results. For steady growth each year, you must invest in marketing on a regular basis. This doesn’t necessarily mean a multi-million dollar budget, but just keeping your website updated and brand awareness campaigns consistently running to help you out when your referrals become scarce. And even referrals can be easily scared away by a poorly maintained website or outdated branding.

Accounting

Unless you are an accounting wiz, experienced with payroll, and have a few spare hours a week, hire a high-quality accountant to handle your books. Not only is accounting time consuming, but doing it incorrectly can have dire consequences. These consequences could be accidentally over or under paying vendors and employees, or even worse, under paying the IRS. Your employees and vendors might be forgiving, but Uncle Sam isn’t. Hire a business accountant with a proven track record to assure everything is done correctly.

Don’t Limit Your Success by Skimping on Important Costs

Know when to skimp, and when to invest. When it comes to business services, there are a number of crucial areas where you will get what you pay for. Pinching pennies at the wrong time will only end up hurting your business in the long run. Invest in your future with quality technology, consistent marketing, and reliable accounting.

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Benefits of Letting Employees Work from Home

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Benefits of Letting Employees Work from Home

Have you considered letting your employees work from home, but aren’t sure what’s in it for you? The reason working from home has become such a huge trend is because it is great for both employee and employer. Some of the benefits of letting employees work from home are that they will be more productive, happier, and take less leave, all while you will enjoy lower overhead costs.

Increase Productivity

According to Entrepreneur.com, 54% of employees prefer working on important projects from home, not in the office.* Most people report that they can focus better and be more productive in a home setting, free from the social and environmental distractions of the office. Who could say no to increased worker productivity?

Work-life Balance

Another benefit of letting employees work from home is the increased work-life balance. Not only will boasting a work-life balance attract better potential candidates, but it will truly make your employees happier and more likely to stay long term. By working from home, workers spend less time in the car and less time preparing for work. This means more free time and less chance that they will burn out.

Lower Overhead Costs

Even if your employees don’t work from home exclusively you will still save on overhead costs by letting employees work from home. You will need less (if any) office space, less office supplies, and less money spent on amenities like coffee and snacks. You will see a drastic effect on your bottom line if you switch to more work from home time for your workers.

Get a Much Wider Pool of Candidates

By touting the ability to work from home, your pool of candidates just got much wider. You now have the ability to hire anyone in any location. In addition, you can consider employees who are limited to working from home due to health reasons or being the caretaker of a family member.

Employees Will Take Fewer Sick Days and Vacation

When you work from home, the need to take a sick day or just get out of the office and take a vacation dwindles. Most minor symptoms that might keep you away from the office are much more manageable at home. With a better work life balance, your employees will also feel less of a desperate need to take a break. Working from home means less paid leave.

Technology Today Makes Working from Home Easy

Technology has finally caught up to make working from home easy. Today, you do not even need to bring a computer back and forth with cloud computing and remote desktop technology. You can access your desktop along with all of your files and programs on any device, anywhere.

With cloud computing, you do not have to worry about cyber security by letting employees work from home either. Cloud computing and remote desktops are actually more secure than traditional networks.

Benefits of Letting Employees Work from Home

The ability to work from home is both sought after by job candidates and beneficial for employers. Enjoy having a wider pool of candidates and employees that will stick around. Offering work from home is great for both productivity and the bottom line.

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What is Cloud Computing?

what is cloud computing

Most working professionals have heard of cloud computing, either as the rising workplace trend or as a hot term in tech. Many people who hear the phrase though find themselves asking, what is cloud computing?

In basic terms, cloud computing is storing and accessing information over the internet rather than from your device’s hard drive. The traditional way to store information is to have a computer with a hard drive and all information stored in your files there. In many offices, there is also an internal server where shared information can be stored and accessed by others in your organization. In contrast to this, cloud computing is having everything stored offsite and accessed by users through the internet.

Once you know what cloud computing is, you can start to imagine the number of benefits and conveniences it offers businesses of any size.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

 

Minimal Hardware Onsite

With cloud computing, you and your organization will need only minimal hardware onsite. No servers, no back-ups, not even sophisticated computers are needed for cloud computing. Devices hardly need any internal storage when you are computing 100% in the cloud.

Access Files and Programs Anywhere

Being able to access your saved data and programs from anywhere is invaluable. The convenience of not needing to bring a laptop to and from the office or adding files to a flash drive for every meeting seems difficult to imagine. With cloud computing, by simply logging on to any device you can pick up right where you left off. This means easier working at home, easier travel, and quicker set up for presentations when you can simply log in to the cloud on location to grab the files you need.

Lower Your Costs

For those money conscious business owners out there, all of this information is probably starting to look like some serious savings. With hardly any hardware and memory needed, your costs in equipment and servers just got cut down to a fraction. Not only that, but with only minimal hardware onsite, your IT staffing needs just went to down too. Cloud computing allows you to both save money and gain convenience.

Speed & Security

Cloud computing will give you both speed and security in your network. There is no lost time due to sitting around waiting to load a large file on an old computer, and no long phone calls with IT when your system goes down. With cloud computing you also have an automatic back-up to call on if you lose data due to a hack, natural disaster, or (the most common cause) human error.

Your productivity will skyrocket when time spent twiddling your thumbs in front of a slow computer is eliminated. With all data stored remotely, there is little to no computing power needed on your end. Say hello to both speed and security with cloud computing.

What is Cloud Computing?

To both small and large businesses, cloud computing is cost saving and convenient. Access your files from anywhere while still benefitting from heightened security and speed.
 

Are you looking for a better computing experience?

Learn More About CloudColorado, the Leading Cloud Provider in the Denver Metro Area

 

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IT Trends for Small Businesses

IT Trends for Small Businesses

As a small business, it can be difficult to stay up to date with current technology trends when you hardly have time to keep up with your clients and staff. Small business technology is taking off though as secure software is more affordable and as our culture overall embraces every-day tech. Keeping up with IT trends for small businesses could save you not only loads of time, but will save you from wasting money on obsolete technology that might be holding you back.

Cloud Computing for Small Businesses

Cloud computing has become the norm, and not just for large tech companies. It has been taking the small business sector by storm because of its convenience and affordable price point. Cloud computing allows small business owners to hand off IT to someone else and focus on their core business while offering the convenience of remote work and being able to access your desktop from any device. Cloud computing is also, contrary to popular belief, more secure and less expensive than managing your own traditional computer network in house.

Collaboration Tools

Tools like Slack, Wrike, and Skype for Business are becoming more affordable and essential for the modern small business. They are helpful for keeping your team all on the same page, organizing different conversations by project, and minimize the disconnect often experienced by remote teams.

As more small businesses have remote employees or work from home, collaboration tools are necessary to keep everyone in the loop. Cut out the incessant phone calls and emails by keeping communications in one central location.

Offsite IT Management

Most small business owners hardly have time to keep up with their clients, let alone have the time to manage an IT department. More companies have been using offsite IT companies as businesses are moving to the cloud and cyber attacks grow more common.

Small business are common targets for cyber attacks because they often use outdated systems or just don’t know a lot about securing their network and protecting against hacks. Using an offsite IT company has grown to be more cost effective than hiring experts in-house and it makes cyber security one less thing for small businesses owners to worry about.

Catering to Mobile

Did you know that more emails are opened on mobile devices than desktop computers every day? Catering to mobile devices is important not only for marketing and web design, but for payment methods as well.

With everyone having a smart phone in hand, mobile payments are a preferred way to pay and even process payments for small vendors. Users like it because they never have to pull out their card or directly give their financial information to the vendor, and vendors like it because they can get paid faster and not have to carry/deposit large amounts of cash.

IT Trends for Small Businesses

Implementing current technology in your small business wisely will save you money, not drain it. Bring your team to a more efficient and secure place with cloud computing, offsite IT management, and collaboration tools.

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Remote Desktop Benefits for Small Business

Remote Desktop Benefits

The future of the work day is in mobility. No longer when you think of “work” do you only imagine a desktop computer, sitting on a desk, inside of a cubical, in an office. A rising number of employees work from home, are on the road, or simply need the flexibility to work from anywhere at any time. How do they all do this? By utilizing cloud computing to have a remote desktop that is accessible from any device. In addition to convenience, remote desktop benefits include heightened cyber security, automatic back-ups, and no requirement for onsite IT.

Stronger Security

Cloud computing is more secure than traditional IT. A traditional network of computers can be hacked in many ways- through an unsecured network, a phishing scam, accidentally downloaded malware, and through many other creative techniques hackers use. Most small businesses are ill-equipped to handle an attack and unwittingly leave themselves easy targets for cyber attacks.

By using a remote desktop, there is nothing onsite that your small business needs to worry about updating, encrypting, scanning, or anything else along those lines. By utilizing a cloud computing company, your cyber security is now completely handled by professionals who keep your system running smoothly and securely as a 24-hour job.

Access Your Desktop from Anywhere, on Any Device

For companies with employees who are often on the road, on work sites, or who need the flexibility to work from home, a remote desktop is a necessity. Thanks to cloud computing and remote desktop benefits, your same exact desktop with all of your files that you access at work is now accessible at any time from any computer. The need to have a mobile computer with you or to have a flash drive to access your files is eliminated. Your full desktop is now accessible at any location and from any computer.

Automated Back-Ups

Backing up your files is usually something that all small businesses know they should be doing, but don’t worry about until a problem arises and important files are lost. Along with the plethora of remote desktop benefits, all of your files (and your employees’ files) are now backed-up automatically.

Human error is the most common cause of lost files. With automated back-ups though, you are also safe in the unlikely event that your network is hacked. Ransomware – when a hacker blocks your access to your own files until a ransom is paid – won’t work on you. There are no files to hold hostage because everything on your remote desktop is automatically backed up by your cloud computing company.

No Need for On-Site IT

When you have a remote desktop, your cloud company will handle all of your IT needs. You do not need to have any servers on site and all network maintenance will be taken care of. Many businesses with remote desktops do still keep an IT team, but they are free to work on big picture strategy and to address custom software needs for your company.

Remote Desktop Benefits

Your work is no longer confined to one computer, at one desk, in one office. With a remote desktop, your files can not only be accessed from any device but yours and your clients’ information is now safer than ever before. Cloud computing is more convenient for mobile work and more cost effective than in-house network management.

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