PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD Cloud computing may hold the key for companies that want to accelerate their business processes and order fulfillment without heavy investments in IT equipment.
The reason: Customer service is hard work. In a brick-and-mortar store, you have to smile and connect with the customer as authentically as you can, all while fulfilling their order as quickly and accurately as possible. If you can do that, and your prices are reasonable and the weather’s OK, the customer might come back.
The fact is, most forms of commerce follow the same principles. If you deliver consistently, you’ll get repeat business. If you miss a beat, you’ll lose customers and perhaps even fall behind the competition. In the business jungle, there’s always someone waiting to pounce when you falter.
The challenge for companies is: How do you balance investments in infrastructure and systems with their ability to generate revenue? Do you sink a lot of money up-front into systems that may pay off down the road, or do you go to market with a bare-bones framework and then scramble to scale up as business grows?
On the small business side, a lot of organizations seem to be avoiding the question altogether. An April 2011 poll of 1,200 independent business owners, conducted by Newtek Business Services, showed that nearly half had no Web presence at all, or were unhappy with their Websites, and only 20-25 percent took payments online.
In another Newtek poll, conducted in May, 71 percent of small businesses surveyed said they have never heard of cloud computing. That may be the main reason they’ve been so slow to adopt e-commerce and dynamic IT capabilities.
In the midmarket, though, businesses are starting to recognize the value of cloud computing and are creating ‘hybrid’ networks, where they can supplement their in-house resources with cloud-based services when demand spikes. They’re also leveraging hosted application services to handle tasks like accounting, payroll, and even order fulfillment, so they can focus on their core business.
Ultimately, the cloud can help companies of every size address their commerce-related challenges.
Firstly, cloud-based apps streamline business processes and cut down on costs, time, and waste associated with paper. According to an April 2011 report in Cloud Computing Journal, more than 80 percent of business-to-business commerce transactions are completed manually, and companies still send 85 percent of invoices and payments on paper. The cloud can help change all that.
Smaller operations can create and run an entire e-commerce site in the cloud. Current services are sophisticated enough to include specialized features for selling services, not just products. That means restaurants, salons, even car rental agencies can roll out customized sites for reservations and payment collection.
And if your offerings are more global in nature, or you’re delivering digital products, having your presence in the cloud means that downloads, international currency conversion and taxes, and other considerations are handled by the service.
If your organization is a little more complex and you have internal infrastructure already, you can use cloud services to overcome performance bottlenecks, especially during peak demand periods.
Using cloud technologies, businesses can engage with customers and partners in real time and share information—safely—in order to grow the business and expand into new areas. They can also automate processes, get a better handle on infrastructure and resource usage, and leverage their new, expanded presence to create what some experts call an extraprise. When your systems and processes integrate seamlessly with those of your customers and partners, you’ve used the cloud to create a commerce community.
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