SMEs also need cloud technology

It is no secret that giants such as Wal-Mart, Amazon, or McDonald's often invest heavily in IT and naturally have advanced technology solutions. They use modern technology to analyze the data in order to make better business decisions. According to reports, Wal-Mart has invested 600 million US dollars to deploy its POS system, this investment for some small companies marvel, apparently, they can not.

Glass product maker James McKelvey missed a $ 2,000 business in his shop in 2009 for the simple reason that credit card payments were not available in stores. So he and his friend Jack Dorsey realized there should be a way to handle credit card transactions easily and to serve small businesses. As a result, they built Square, a cloud-based transaction processing startup that today has an estimated market capitalization of more than $ 4 billion. But more importantly, many small businesses around the world can easily handle credit card transactions.

In fact, SMEs have been able to rely on cloud technology to benefit, and this point is fully justifiable.

In business operations, cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms are increasingly being deployed. Many small businesses are already using third-party SaaS software to manage their payroll, employee health care, and other business decision-making capabilities.

Software that was previously only available in large enterprises is being reworked nowadays, because unlike technologies that used to be non-cloud technologies in the past, today's technology is no longer expensive, complicated hardware, or equipped with a dedicated IT team It's Software as a service is getting cheaper, faster, easier, smarter. Analytics firm Gartner predicts that by 2016, the market for software-as-a-service and cloud-based enterprise applications will grow from the current $ 13.4 billion to $ 32.2 billion.

Small and medium businesses need cloud technology because they lack the technical resources and expertise to quickly remedy these pitfalls with cloud technologies. Without a sophisticated IT environment, SMEs can quickly adapt to new technologies and discover the value, and more importantly, less capital invested.

Here are some examples of cloud technologies that can be used in small businesses:

§ File Management: Dropbox, Google Drive Now more and more small businesses will store their important data in the cloud, they will use some of the lower cost or free services, such as Dropbox and Google Grive, users use these two Services, as long as you can connect to the Internet, you can easily access documents and files, and even on mobile devices.

§ Accounting :: ADP, Intuit Most small business owners are not accountants, so they look for cloud technology software solutions that will help them solve time-consuming accounting tasks such as payroll, invoicing / billing, budgeting , Forecasting and more.

Website Management: Squarespace, Wix. For most businesses, their own official website is essential. But creating and managing websites requires some technical skills, but it also takes time and money. Services like Squarespace and Wix make it easy to create a customer-facing website that's easy to master.

§ Marketing: Signpost. Every business needs to market their products and services, track their own customers and build loyalty. Today, there are a number of next-generation automated marketing software designed and developed for small and medium-sized businesses to help entrepreneurs design advanced digital marketing activities that will allow them to get new customers without leaving home. More importantly, these software can bring a lot of repeat business to enterprises without spending too much cost.

When deploying some enterprise-level IT services, it can take months or even years to smash into millions of dollars, all of which is the cost of investing before embracing IT value. And SMEs have absolutely no need to do so, they can sign with a cloud service provider, the cost is very low, and even can be deployed in a few minutes to run. If this service has no value, SMEs can get rid of them at any time. And those big companies, because they all signed contracts for many years, spend a lot of money on hardware investment, making it hard for them to make up their mind to overthrow the previous work.

For all these reasons, even some "antiques" companies are now starting to experiment with cloud technology services. According to IDC's report, the revenue of enterprise-class cloud technology applications in 2011 reached nearly 23 billion U.S. dollars and it is estimated that by 2016 this figure will reach 67 billion U.S. dollars. By that time, one out of every five dollars will be spent on cloud technology software and infrastructure. At the same time, Cisco predicts that by 2016, the cloud-related data volume will increase from 39% of total data volume in 2011 to 64%. Nowadays, when some smart big business enterprises encounter the same problems, they try to use the experience of small and medium-sized enterprises to solve them by using cloud technology services.

The most important thing for businesses is their products, services, and the financial viability of running the business. In a business environment, cloud technology enhances the competitiveness of small businesses. More and more small businesses can also use advanced technologies that in the past were owned by large enterprises for internal use only.

As we look forward to the next few years, we will find that as more and more enterprises have the same technology in their careers, these advanced technologies can not only provide automated solutions but also optimize business operations. We hope that in the future we can see that some small shops will use the same cloud technology tools as Wal-Mart, as well as Salesforce's automated marketing programs as well as customer relationship management systems, big data analytics, automated settlement of wages and accounting services, hiring talent, And so on and so on.