Cloud computing empowers and enables remote employees to adapt and efficiently prepare for the current and upcoming “new normals.” As a result, it has become the backbone for businesses looking to scale by leveraging cloud technology for remote work regardless of these uncertain times.
As a business owner, you might be in one of the following positions:
- You haven’t adopted cloud technology and are a little reluctant to as you are unaware of its implications.
- You have partially adopted cloud technology for some of your functionalities but are unsure how to proceed.
- You have entirely optimized your business with different technologies and are looking for ways to improve existing efficiencies.
Regardless of which stage of cloud adoption you are at, here is a guide that can help you improve your existing automation or begin your journey into cloud adoption.
What are the main challenges posed by remote work?
1. For Employees:
Employees had the advantage of accessible communication and constant mentorship from their managers during the pre-pandemic phase due to a shared common location. Remote work severed that bond. Additionally, every process involving manual labor and human intervention would no longer have the same efficiency level as in-office employees. This results in a complete fall in employee morale and productivity.
2. For Finance Teams:
The Finance team is the only department whose work completion depends on active collaboration with everyone else. Take the case of determining operating costs or expense reimbursements; Finance teams would meet employees in person to get the job done. This is impossible during remote work and leads to broken financial statements, higher TATs for reimbursements, and overworked Finance employees.
3. For Businesses:
The pandemic has seen the closure of over 100,000 establishments. Broken processes or finances combined with low-performing employees could decline the business’s health and success.
Leadership teams must take charge and understand the importance of change. In addition, businesses need to leverage the flexibility that cloud technology can offer them to drive their remote employees to generate profit and revenue successfully.
Why should businesses adopt cloud technology?
The increased physical distance between employees has motivated businesses to adopt tools that enable seamless collaboration for employees regardless of their geographic location. This allows remote teams to have consistent levels of productivity while completing their goals on time.
Studies report a massive 81% increase in the adoption of cloud services like expense management software, time tracking software, and other communication software since the onset of COVID. This has mainly been because cloud technology does all the heavy lifting for your employees while also delivering efficient processes and workflows.
It’s safe to conclude that cloud software enables businesses to bridge the physical gap between employees that has been caused by remote work. The best place to start is to look for technology that allows teams to collaborate seamlessly and lets them get the job done just as they were in office.
Four reasons your remote work model will thrive with cloud technology
1. Real-time collaboration for remote employees
Cloud technology has been developed to suit the needs of distributed employees and teams. For example, cloud technology like a simple Google Doc enables entire teams to work on the same document from multiple places while simultaneously editing it. This blurs the geographical boundaries between employees and allows for a wholesome work environment where only the best work goes live.
Here’s a quick list of tools you can use to refine remote collaboration:
- Notion: For all your documentation needs.
- Slack: All work-related communication.
- Fyle: For a seamless expense management experience.
- Google Drive: A secure cloud storage for all your files.
- Zoom: For video conferences.
- Trello: Project management across teams.
- 360Learning: For collaborative onboarding and employee training
With all the essential roadblocks of remote work now addressed, businesses can continue work undisrupted. Furthermore, business executives can gain 100% control and insight into all business processes through a central dashboard. This ensures there’s more accountability and understanding of all the nuances of business operations.
2. Leadership teams can make data-backed decisions
Cloud software is powered by advanced analytics that analyze and provide valuable insights from all your data. This will act as ammo for your leadership teams to make the right business decisions with no added effort.
For example, if your Finance teams use an expense report software, they gain additional insight into policy violations, spending patterns, and top spending departments across the company. With this information, Finance teams can make precise budget cuts and have better control of operational costs.
Other cloud technologies in similar ways have been perfectly designed to address those particular problems in their niche.
3. Gain more insight and control into business expenses
Traditional expense management is now history. Companies that continue to use manual modes of operation will be more prone to having a complete lack of control of business expenses while also opening new avenues for expense fraud.
Cloud technologies like expense software can make business expense tracking easier for both employees and Finance teams by adding a layer of accuracy to the process while also reducing the risk of fraud by minimizing the dependence on human intervention.
4. Improved work experience for remote teams
Cloud technology prevents employees from having to latch onto their desks all day. With just a stable Wi-Fi connection, employees can work from literally anywhere while keeping up the same productivity levels. This directly helps improve an employee’s overall work experience.
That said, if you have a medium-large organization it may make sense to invest in a top-tier webinar platform as it can better handle the demands of your organization. While free video conferencing tools are great, they have limits on attendees.
More than 50% of employees have requested to go utterly remote after the pandemic. – McKinsey Study, 2021.
If you’re wondering why such a large percentage of employees want to go remote, the answer is simple. Remote work gives them a sense of power and liberation to work from the comfort of their homes to get the job done. All of this, though, will be impossible to achieve without cloud technology.
Conclusion
After the pandemic, much of the everyday life of an employee revolves around adapting to the new normal. Businesses that successfully made this transition to work from home attribute the ease of adaptation to cloud technology and the benefits it brings with it.
Enable your business to stay remote and scale by empowering your employees to continue the work they do with little to no disruptions.
