Storing financial information, transaction details, and personal data for your clients is difficult, but essential for your business to function. Traditional finance systems rely on countless files, papers, and large numbers of hard drives to store digital information on-site. Though the system is effective, it’s not practical for growing companies looking to expand their operations and reach new levels of success. Cloud financial solutions help you streamline your business’s finances and keeps your company running smoothly without forcing you to dramatically expand your accounting department.
5 Key Reasons to Invest in Cloud-Based Finance Management Solutions
Cloud financial solutions do far more than just bring your business into the future. They set your company up for success in the long-term. Here are a few important reasons to consider investing in this digital transformation called cloud solutions for financial services.
Frees Up Resources
Standard accounting solutions require a lot of resources to make sure everything is up to date. Without those resources, your accounting team won’t be able to monitor accounts, make changes to correct errors, or make sure your finances are set up in time for your quarterly tax payments. When you invest in cloud-based financial solutions for management, you’ll free up those resources to better grow your company. Instead of relying on new computers, databases, files, and storage space, you’ll house your information in the cloud, off-site.
With cloud financial solutions, you can reduce the size of their own data centers — or eliminate their data center footprint altogether. The reduction of the numbers of servers, the software cost, and the number of staff can significantly reduce IT costs without impacting an organization’s IT capabilities.
This gives you access to more space and makes it possible for you to repurpose existing equipment to expand other aspects of your business. Even better, you’ll be able to outsource many of those time-consuming accounting and payroll tasks. This gives you more freedom to distribute labor to other departments that can more immediately improve your customers’ experience.
Makes Accessing Information Easy
When you have traditional in-house financial cloud solutions implemented, you’re only able to access the information when you’re at the office. If you’re off-site or have a question after hours, you’re stuck having to wait to get the answers you need. With financial solutions, you’re able to access the information you need from any internet-enabled device. This means you’re free to access your business’s financial reporting, accounting documents, and tax info whether you’re on-site or not.
It also makes it easy to share information with the necessary parties. If you’re working with a dedicated payroll specialist, cloud solutions for financial services will make it easy to share information as needed. Payroll is one of the most important aspects of a business. It affects employee morale and reflects a business’s financial stability and reputation.
Because employees rely on their paychecks, errors or untimely payment can create a lack of trust. But when paychecks are accurate and delivered in real-time, employees are more engaged and motivated. A cloud financial solution saves you time and reduces the frustration that comes from confusing payroll issues.
Saves Money
If you’ve ever had to pay to repair half a dozen computers after a virus takes them down, you know just how costly it is to maintain the equipment. This not only takes away from your operating budget. Worse, you have to pay for that equipment in the first place.
You would not have to purchase equipment and build-out and operate a data center. With this multi-cloud solution, you don’t have to spend significant money on hardware, facilities, utilities, and other aspects of operations. With traditional computing, you can spend millions before it gets any value from its investment in the data center.
When you invest in cloud-based financial solutions, you don’t have to have all the equipment on-hand at your business. Instead, you’re paying for someone to provide the necessary databases, software, and storage to keep your company’s information safe. No matter how large or small your business is, this will save you money every year.
It’s More Secure
If you’re like most business owners, you’re operating under the assumption that keeping your information on-site is the best way to keep it safe. While this can be true, it’s not the case for most companies. Investing in the security measures required to keep customers’ data and financial information safe costs thousands of dollars upfront. Worse, you have to continually update your security protocols to maintain compliance.
As some organizations address their security and compliance concerns by extending corporate policies, they can more fully take advantage of the benefits of cloud financial solutions.
When you invest in cloud-based financial solutions, you’re sparing yourself the headache of implementing state-of-the-art security processes. Instead of having to follow trends and be mindful of the latest threats, the cloud provider handles it for you. They’ll manage any updates automatically and can make sure they’re rolled out in time without you having to worry about errors or problems.
Gives Clients Peace of Mind
Your business is successful because you put your clients first. You know that their security matters and when you’re able to show which steps you’re taking to keep their information secure, they’ll be more likely to trust your brand and your company. When those clients feel they can trust your business to look out for their interests, they’ll be more likely to recommend you to their friends, family, and coworkers.
Finding The Perfect Provider
As the number of financial systems managed by cloud systems increased over the years, so did its providers. Businesses now have a wide variety of partners to choose from and work with. But how can you ensure your providers are trustworthy?
Here’s 5 questions that you can use in choosing your cloud financial solutions partner!
- Do They Understand Your Needs? Keep in mind that every business is unique from one another. So it only make sense that your provider understand what you exactly need.
- Do They Answer All of Your Questions? Cloud solutions are pretty technical and as providers, it’s their to job to provide clients with easy-to-understand answers around solutions, business practices and pricing rubrics.
- Can They Provide You With References? Providers should be try to at least connect you with previous clients who can provide you with their own experience working with them! This is taking customer ratings to another level.
- Do They Offer A Clear And Comprehensive Contract? Their contract should include service-level guarantees that spell out specifics such as minimum acceptable performance level uptime as well as other performance variables. It should also provide you with a good idea of their security and business provisions including security and backup procedures.
- Do They Have Experts On-board? It’s not enough for providers to speak the language of finance fluently. They need to have a good number of CPAs, CFOS and other finance professionals within their team that knows the requirements of finance users!
LOOKING FOR HELP IMPLEMENTING CLOUD SOLUTIONS?
If you’re not sure where to start making the transition from on-site storage to cloud solutions, don’t panic.
Schedule a consultation with our team and let us help you figure out the best way to manage your clients’ sensitive data safely. At Lumos, we understand the intricacies and challenges businesses face. Whether you’re a large investment firm or a small team of professionals, we’re ready to help you find the right solutions for your growing company.
