The events of the last 3 months have impacted the majority of businesses across the globe and without doubt the challenges for most SMB’s in the UK have been considerable and many.
SMB’s have now been invited by the UK government to join the efforts to ‘restart’ the economy following its broad stroke halt on March 23rd, whilst maintaining social distancing and remaining ‘alert’.
The Challenges of Covid-19 for SMB’s considering the Cloud
Employers more than ever must now consider the safety of their employees and in many cases, there have been dramatic changes to working processes, hours and the location of staff teams.
In the case of manufacturers, it is commonplace for only operational staff to be based ‘at work’. Making, assembling or physically repairing an item, cannot be done from home but accounting, purchase, sales and senior management functions are now being fulfilled remotely as commonplace.
The culture of ‘remote working’ has encountered resistance in the UK historically, unlike the US where it has been an accepted work model for a decade.
The last 3 months has resulted in a massive shift in the mindset of employers as they now understand that staff can and will work effectively from home.
Whilst restrictions are being eased, social distancing is here for the foreseeable future and the crystal ball regarding future spikes or fresh pandemics is cloudy to say the least.
Business Owners are staying awake worrying about:
- Restoring their order books.
- Ensuring their supply chain is robust and efficient
- Keeping their staff safe whilst maintaining productivity
- Controlling costs
- Keeping their doors open
- What if lockdown happens again?
How will moving away from an onsite server help to meet those challenges?
Whilst moving to a SaaS solution and away for onsite servers is not a magic wand it will support business owners to meet current challenges, work in the ‘new normal’ and grow their businesses.
- A central, CRM that is part of your ERP, accessed via a web browser keeps you in touch with your customers and prospects, enabling future sales predictions to be evaluated and tracked. If you don’t have sales, you don’t have a business.
- A supply chain supported by a SaaS hosted central ERP data that provides accurate stock holdings and recommends future requirements makes sure businesses make better purchasing decisions, faster.
- Staff can work from home effectively using SaaS cloud services, easing pressure on health and safety requirements
- Moving away from an onsite server not only saves on the costs to maintain the server itself but frees up staff time spent on keeping it running and secure. Costs for replacing onsite servers are increasing year on year.
- Productivity requires demand and resource. Once the order book has improved, furloughed staff will need to return to the ‘workplace’. If a SaaS based central system is available that ‘workplace’ can be anywhere whilst not effecting productivity.
- Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. There are predictions that the recent pandemic is not going to be a ‘one off’. The general advice is that we need to learn, adjust and prepare.
Early statistics for adults working from home as a direct result of social distancing measures suggest that at least 49.2% are now not attending their workplace regularly but are telecommuting
Thought for the Day
If business owners fail to explore the benefits versus cost of moving away from onsite servers and potentially legacy software solutions, they risk not only being unprepared for future events like the 2020 pandemic but being left behind by its competitors.
Via Cloud services, users can access all types of files, use applications as though they were in the office, and even collaborate remotely while working on the same project or presentation on their device as someone on the other side of the globe. Even if you’re away from work or your office server is inaccessible, data in the cloud is always up to date and available wherever, whenever.