It is well known that running a business is costly. The bottom line is further reduced depending on the trade.
But as technology progresses exponentially, there are an increasing number of opportunities for businesses to cut down on costs by taking advantage of these advances.
The World Wide Web has essentially been the platform for the creation of cost saving opportunities. Being able to trade partly or in some cases entirely on the web, has helped businesses significantly reduce costly office overheads.
Moving the focus of clients from call centers and offices to the company website, can enable companies to save on staff costs, as well as stationary costs, by converting paper documents to downloadable files.
The emergence of cost comparison sites has enabled businesses to continuously and easily find better deals on overheads such as telephone, broadband and other utilities.Communication is of course vital for any business. However, there is no need to be paying a premium for your outbound calls to customers. Effective call management tools can save a lot of overhead costs for any business.Buying a 0800 number for your business can be a good idea. It not only can help you manage all the calls your company receives but also will be advantageous for the image of your business. For more information on 0800 numbers click here.
More recently the hype is around cloud computing solutions.
Put simply, cloud computing is the ability to access resources and software over the internet. Businesses operating in a virtual environment have the opportunity to considerably lower costs, as well as increase their flexibility. Capability as well as capacity can be increased with little notice and without having to invest in new infrastructure and staff.
Cloud computing heavily relies on the sharing of resources to achieve the aims of the technology.
Microsoft, Amazon, Apple as well as a host of other companies have launched their cloud computing service. Across the business market, this essentially comes in three forms; public, private and hybrid.
Public clouds are as the words suggest; access to information that is available to the public, or is generally not sensitive. Pretty much any application can be run virtually and then accessed anywhere globally.
For businesses this is a useful tool for their clientele. The ability for clients to access information relevant to them via the virtual company server, is a powerful cost saving method. The advent of mobile devices has enabled this to be in the form of an easy to maintain app.
The information is stored with secure third party holders and gives businesses great flexibility by allowing them to scale up or down quickly and efficiently. It is often run by a pay-per-use method.
Private clouds are generally used for sensitive information that must remain within the company. Businesses can use resources built for their organisation whether on or off site and get all the advantages of the public cloud as well as the ability to manage their infrastructure.
Like many things in life, most businesses are suited to a percentage of both public and private clouds. As a result this demand, hybrid clouds have spawned.
Hybrid clouds enable some data to be held securely and other data to be able to be accessed by the public in real time. The great thing with these is that businesses have complete flexibility over how much data is allocated to the public and private clouds, and this can be interchanged at any point and at low cost.
A further advantage of cloud computing is the ability for staff to access company resources from any location. Microsoft has taken steps in this area too by developing Office 365, enabling staff to virtually access all Office software. This can not only reduce staff overhead costs but also promote productivity.
Cloud computing is still in its infancy but it is clear that it will make a significant impact in the business world. The propagation of this technology will be further aided by the rapid global growth of mobile devices.
We can only hope that the cost savings will in some part be passed on to us.
Image courtesy: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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That’s great information Praveen and cloud services is not something I’m using at this moment.
I’ve heard about them like DropBox but have heard that people have had a lot of issues with them too. I’ve even heard some major complaints about Amazon. Their lack of service and being able to help is something I don’t like. Some of these companies want to just sent you to a forum and hope that someone else can answer your questions. I think that’s poor customer service there.
But I can see why they would be beneficial for most businesses. Much more cost effective in some respects.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I won’t need them. Hey, I can hope right!
Enjoy your week and thanks again.
~Adrienne
Adrienne recently posted…How to Build a Rock Star Brand
Adrienne – I am sure you are right about lack of customer service in most of such “service-oriented” businesses. One should really be ready for any such mishaps and will not be able to count on the “forums” as you have rightly mentioned.
I wasnt aware that Dropbox also had similar issues, that is new to me, this encourages me to write a review on several such services now 🙂 Thanks for the input.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Software for Fundraising