How Cloud Storage Makes Employees More Effective

We’ve talked at length about the security benefits and transformational qualities of moving your small business data over to the cloud, but those aren’t the only areas that cloud storage can positively impact.

Here are 5 benefits from using the cloud that directly affect the productivity and overall effectiveness of your employees.

1) Constant Accessibility

Storing your data on the cloud means that your employees can access the files and information that they need to work anytime, anywhere. Whether your small business has been using remote-work from the beginning, or whether you have recently pivoted to this model in response to COVID-19, you know that accessibility boosts your employees efficiency right off the bat.

Whether they are working from home, commuting on public transit, or traveling for work, they can pick up right where they left off on files stored in the cloud. The ability to work anywhere dramatically increases productivity, both because of the convenience and because of the psychological benefits of being able to choose your work environment.

2) Increased Collaboration

I could easily title this section “How Google Docs Changed My Life”, and I don’t think I’m alone in that sentiment. The collaboration capabilities within the cloud are truly remarkable and quickly boost employee efficiency with the ease of file sharing, editing, and approving documents.

Picture this example: An employee needs sign-off on marketing copy and has to get it to her boss right away to meet a deadline. She prints the document from her work desk, walks over to the mail room or office printer, potentially waits a few minutes for someone else’s job to finish up, collects the document, and drops it in her boss’s mailbox or on their desk where it will quickly become buried under the million other things that her boss has to approve that day.

Or, that employee creates the marketing copy on a document in the cloud, sets access and editing privileges, and then an automatic email notifies her boss that the document is ready for review. Simple!

Which sounds like a more efficient scenario to you? That is the benefit of collaborating within the cloud . . . an accelerated workflow for yourself and your employees.

3) Data Security

Time for a horror story. An acquaintance who worked in the same industry as I used to (nonprofits) once told me the story of having her car broken into while at a donor meeting. Someone stole her laptop which had sensitive information like credit card numbers and donor information (names, addresses, phone numbers, etc.). This was a nightmare for multiple reasons, the biggest being that storing paper copies of credit information is not secure (and comes with a hefty fine within the nonprofit industry) and a close second being the uncomfortable calls to notify the donors whose personal information was compromised.

This was the struggle of working on the road as a fundraiser back in 2009! Very few of us were schlepping our heavy work laptops to donor meetings and so we were often carrying hand-written donor and gift data around until we got back to the office.

With the advent of the cloud (not to mention more portable, lightweight, and secure computing devices!) working remotely has become less of a security risk. You can have access to all your files right from your phone, knowing that they are secure in the cloud. In more recent years, I spent many hours working from my phone on long train and bus commutes to work, never concerned about the security of my files and data, and using my time efficiently before I even arrived at the office.

4) Reduced Downtime

Story time again. In my former career, my entire office once had to take a significant amount of time off during what should have been a normal work week, all because the server room overheated and was at risk for a fire.

Of course the IT team worked around the clock through the next several days to get us up and running again, but the costs of the unanticipated down time for the rest of our employees were enormous for the organization.

When you work from the cloud, you have numerous backup servers in place in a variety of locations, so that even if a natural disaster does strike, you won’t have an interruption in your workflow.

5) IT Efficiency

This might be a niche benefit, but if your business is big enough to have a full-time IT person, then you know that a huge percentage of their billable hours are devoted to maintaining your server. But even if you have a huge IT staff, there are still industries that just can’t be put on hold for system maintenance! Media organizations have to produce news on the turn of a dime, the legal and healthcare industries simply can’t afford to lose important client files, and can you imagine your accountant being unable to access your tax files right before the deadline to file?

However if you are working from the cloud, not only do you avoid the disruption of your entire team, but your IT staff is freed up for other priority tasks (such as running security checks!) The benefit of an efficient cloud storage solution here is that it gives you a more nimble, responsive, and productive IT department.

Ready to set your team up for success and increase their productivity? Tech Masters is here to get your organization set up in the cloud for a more secure and efficient workflow.