7 Reasons Why You Need to Move to the Cloud Today

Imagine if you had the time to develop value-added services for your in-house business or clients? Accountants have an incredible amount of business knowledge and experience. Put that expertise to work on behalf of your clients or department heads by producing detailed data reports for them.

Currently, few accountants and bookkeepers analyze data in depth for either themselves or their clients. As cloud-hosted applications are adopted by more businesses and accounting firms, clients will come to expect more refined data mining and interpretation skills from you. Data analysis lets you demonstrate that you possess a deep understanding of the business as well as the ways in which market forces and government regulations might affect industries. Use the detailed reports to structure a strategic financial plan that your clients can use to drive their own businesses forward.

Let cloud-hosted applications take care of traditional tasks, like tax preparation and audit work. So, you can spend more time in an advisory and planning role. Accountants can use built-in cloud capabilities to collect data across banks of customer information, financial trends, industry information, and more. The ease with which any type and amount of information can be accessed puts small and medium-sized accounting firms on a level footing with large firms. Test new ideas, take on larger projects – whatever you or your client would like to do, you will have the insights that can lead to success.

Better yet? Cloud services can be scaled to accommodate your business growth and changing priorities, and a customized cloud service provider can work with customers to add or expand services as your company expands.

Enhanced remote mobility isn’t just a benefit for employees who are looking for more flexibility or a customized work environment – it’s a huge perk for clients and partners as well. Why? The cloud allows for 24/7 collaboration with partners and customers around the globe as long as they have access to an internet-connected device.

Also, customers expect a lot these days. Ask them what they want, and we’ll bet they tell you they want ease of access and high efficiency from the companies they hire. Your clients expect your business to be available whenever they need you, even if that’s after business hours. Granting clients access to their accounts means that they can edit their financial data and follow real-time changes to their accounts from any device at any time. Cloud technology gives you the power to collaborate with your staff and clients in ways that you never could before, and this perk of remote accessibility is incredibly beneficial – especially during tax season.

Do you think all of that sensitive data stored on your computer or in filing cabinets in your office is safe? It’s not. In reality, every bookkeeper and accountant is one natural disaster or security breach away from losing all of it. According to a recent cyber security statistics report, cybercrime costs small and medium businesses more than $2.2 million each year; and a Clark School study at the University of Maryland found that hacker attacks take place once every 39 seconds – that translates to over 2,000 hacking attempts in a single day.

Unfortunately, your business data is under constant threat of attack or data loss, and the threat isn’t just from digital hacking attempts that take place every 39 seconds.  In an on-premise setting, there’s a much higher risk for data to be compromised or hardware to be damaged because of external factors, such as human intervention (theft) or natural disasters (flooding). Typically, data in the cloud is kept on hardware in secure data centers with multiple layers of security, power backups and (although this is solely dependent on the hosting provider) redundant servers. Traditional disaster recovery requires a remote disaster recovery (DR) site, which means more work on your IT department, since they would typically be in charge of maintenance and support.

Data protection and disaster recovery in this setting can be resource-intensive, time-consuming and inefficient. Cloud disaster recovery, as opposed to traditional recovery solutions, is simple to set-up and monitor by cloud providers. Cloud technology is able to automate backup data practices, and most providers retain copies of client data backups for a certain period of time. With this, it isn’t the end of the world if you forget to perform your own backup for a day. For example, at Summit Hosting, we perform nightly dedicated server backups and retain these copies for 15 days.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of cloud-hosted applications – and the one that will give your firm a competitive boost – is the built-in convenience. Cloud software is intuitive and easy to use. All of the streamlined capabilities and perks we expect from consumer applications are embedded into accounting applications.

Whether you want to apply cloud capabilities to payroll, finance tracking, HR management, CRM, expense recording, or tax filing, cloud-hosted applications are designed to be flexible, compatible on all devices, ultra secure, and value-added.

At this point, although the benefits of cloud hosting have (hopefully) piqued your interest, you may find yourself worrying about the actual process of moving applications to the cloud. Luckily, there’s no reason to fret! Moving your business to the cloud just means that you’re opting to use software that lives on the internet instead of on your own work computer. Once you’ve decided on the best cloud hosting company for your business, it’s a fairly streamlined process; and after the account set-up and data migration, all you need is a device – desktop, laptop, tablet, smart phone – an internet service and a password.

We can’t speak for the steps involved in all data and cloud migrations considering each provider has different protocols they follow, so we’ll just use ours as an example.

After you’ve spoken with an experienced hosting specialist and signed up for our managed application cloud hosting services at Summit Hosting, all you have to do is:

1. Work with a member of our engineering team to securely transfer your software company files.
2. Let us know if you need any additional resources, i.e. more cloud storage or a specific 3rd-party application integrated to your custom-built dedicated server.
3. Wait 24-48 hours while our team builds out your dedicated server according to the specs you provided and installs your company files.
4. Install the provided program that will allow you to remotely access your data from anywhere, and begin working immediately from any device just as you normally would while at the office.

Our cloud migration services make the process of moving your applications to the cloud the easiest part of your journey. Once you’re fully functional with our managed cloud services, operating your accounting software in a cloud environment will be seamless – no lost files or functionality, just all the benefits of cloud accounting. 

We could keep going on and on about how helpful the cloud has become for businesses across the world but your time is valuable and we’ll try not to keep you any longer.

By now, you’ve been armed with the information you need to make a confident decision about your business and the cloud. However, there are a few important questions left for you to consider: “Is the cloud right for my business?” and “Is now the best time to migrate?”

In our professional opinion, the answer to both is simply yes. As technology continues to progress, the number of benefits and possibilities of cloud solutions will only continue to grow as well; and now is the perfect time to join hundreds of thousands of others who have successfully scaled their businesses thanks to the benefits of the cloud.

Contact us if you’d like more details on cloud hosting and how it could benefit your business. We’re here to answer any questions you may have and help you find the right solutions for your company and employees.