Why using the Cloud will make remote working count

If you are a business owner, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Are you struggling to access your financial resources?
2. Do all of your business functions tie in with your company strategy in order to build a resilient business for the future? 
3. Do you feel that since lockdown started your business operations need to increase efficiency?

Have you ever considered moving your business strategy to the cloud? During lockdown, companies were forced to work remotely and tried to keep it business as usual, but not everyone was ready for such a big and sudden change. We picked up that the companies who already adopted a cloud strategy at that time didn’t have documents stored in the office or financial software that only lives on the office server. Let’s also consider the fourth industrial revolution of cloud based technology, adopting a cloud strategy for your business is not just a nice to have but has become vital when building a business that can transcend what is currently happening and allow it to be resilient during this time. 

Many business owners struggle to make important decisions based on their financial statements. Lately, the struggle has increased since lockdown and social distancing had come into play. Programs such as Pastel and other desktop based programs (including excel) does not allow quick and easy access (if any) for an entire team to work remotely. I’m not even going to mention the health risk of moving staff back to the office at this time, the extra expenses, backlogs heaping up etc… 

Maybe you need access to your cash flows during load-shedding or perhaps you don’t have your laptop close by and need to check if certain payments were made and or received or double check something. 

How does the cloud work?

Perhaps the thought has crossed your mind and you have considered this “cloud thing” but where do you start? In short, it’s software that lives on the internet. It’s not a physical program that you download or a CD that you install on your computer. You simply access it the same way you would logging to your Google or YouTube account – don’t worry, it is very secure (we’ll get to that later). Our team makes use of Xero Accounting Software. Xero is easy to understand, adaptable, scalable and if you couple this with something like a Google Business or Microsoft Office 365, you have an excellent base core to start your cloud journey on. 

A few benefits to having the cloud as part of your strategy: 

• Access – Let’s say you travel a lot (when the world is not fighting COVID-19) or work from home or from coffee shops, you will be able to access your data, quickly view your net profit for the month whilst standing in the queue at the bank or send an invoice while you’re out of the office. You are able to access your data at any time, from anywhere and on any device as long as you have an internet connection. 
• Security and Back-up – Especially during this time where hacking and cyber attacks have become an actual job for some, it’s scary to load all of your financial information into a cloud. Rest assured that Xero uses banking grade encryption and data security. You can also add two factor authentication as an additional layer as well. Which means that your data is safe and ready to be accessed by the relevant & authorised people who need access to it.
• Cost Reduction – People often look at the monthly subscription fees and think that it’s too expensive but in retrospect, if you consider no down time in your service, or how expensive your servers are when it comes to the cost of maintenance and upgrades in your office or need extra capacity, it’s really cheap. With a cloud solution you can scale easily and quickly for the space and time you need or scale down when you need less. You also get access to world class infrastructure, which in the past was only available to a limited number of big-pocket companies.
• Real Time Collaboration – It is so important to be able to discuss and collaborate details if and when they occur, and not weeks or months even after it is needed or top of mind. For collaboration purposes it’s so important to know that you sit with only one truth of the information – not various different back-ups or versions that will inevitably lead to data clashes somewhere along the line and results in costly reconciliations that need to take place. 

All in all, considering business resilience and setting your business up for success going into the future, this is something every business owner should consider and evaluate where they are at. So if you’re thinking about adopting a cloud strategy, reach out to us and we can help you move, set-up and start your journey – making remote working count in favour of your business.

This article has been put together by Johan Potgieter CA(SA), Cloud Accounting Manager; Certified Xero Advisor

Johan heads-up our cloud accounting department. With his extensive knowledge of internal structures and corresponding business models, optimising internal business processes through cloud automation, systems and integrations, he adds immense value to our OCFO clients. Johan has leadership skills like few other, and takes pride in finding solutions that adds value to SME’s.