Starting a business these days has never been easier. In days of yore, setting up a business involved a great deal of expense and outlay before any kind of profit could be seen. Much of the finance needed would have gone on things like office space, hardware and stationery. However, since the emergence of Cloud Computing, many of the traditional business requirements can now be managed easily and cost effectively, online. Here are five ways in which the ‘Cloud’ can help your business save space, time and, most importantly, money.

File Storage

With the demise of the conventional office set up and the rise of the internet, more people are working remotely from home. In the past, documents had to be emailed to those who were working on them, and if they needed altering, updated and re-sent. Now companies, like Dropbox for example, offer a cloud based network which employees are able to access and view, store and update documents without confusing duplicate copies being created.

Telecommunications

One of the drawbacks of not having a physical office space is there is no receptionist, or centralised telephone system. This can easily be rectified with the use of a hosted dialer communications service that enables you to make, take, route, record and even broadcast calls. Using this type of cloud based software will reduce costs, manage incoming and outgoing calls and enable international conference call with any number of countries.

Accounting

Managing the books is a complicated business in itself, and can be particularly confusing when you start out. Luckily there’s a plethora of online, cloud based accounting programs, like Clever Accounts or Blue Pearl to name but a few, who make the job a whole lot easier. As long as you keep up to date with entering all the required data, they will do your VAT, tax and profit and loss calculations and can even send out invoices, etc.

Software

Keeping up with all of the progressions with software is almost impossible, as companies are constantly refining and improving their tools for the customer. One way around this is to pay monthly subscriptions to Adobe, for example, who will give you access to their cloud based software. This way you will always be using the latest tools available and there are no large initial payments, which can be hard to cover as you start up.

Marketing

Linkedin, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook are an entrepreneur’s dream come true. There is no better way to reach your market these days than through social media marketing. It is completely free to set up an account, it is instant and it is the future. Creating a profile for your company is the first step, after which regular updates need to be made which are of interest to you and your customers. You also have the potential to directly market to those who are most likely to desire your service or product.

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