SugarCloud: 7 Benefits of Cloud Computing
By 2021, “94% of workloads and compute instances will be processed through cloud-based data centers.” There is no going back. Every year, businesses worldwide migrate their software to cloud-enabled platforms, including SugarCloud. Compared to on-site or local IT systems, cloud service platforms provide companies with a secure, user-friendly way to manage data while allowing it to be accessed from anywhere.
Your IT infrastructure is the engine on which your business runs. With the support of the SugarCloud platform, your business has the ability to take full advantage of Sugar’s SaaS approach, meaning you can access the entire Sugar suite of products almost anywhere your team can access the internet without increasing costs. In an increasingly connected and competitive global economy, you want to get the best business engine you can afford so that your business sustainably grows its market share.
That explains why 44% of businesses plan to increase tech spending in 2020, up from 38% in 2019. In this article, we’ll take a look at seven benefits that cloud computing provides to your business.
1. Security
Organizational technology faces internal and external threats to data security. Cybercriminals and even disgruntled employees can steal data and sabotage your company’s tech if given the opportunity. So, it is essential for any responsible business to have a solution that adequately secures your data.
Compared to in-house IT security, cloud providers offer superior protection—no one can secure a product better that your provider. Securing the client data entrusted to them is part of the core of the SugarCloud platform, customer data security and clustering takes priority to assure that you have all your information when you need it. For that reason, they invest substantially in researching, developing, and acquiring top-performing security options.
Some of the security features you expect to receive from cloud service providers include:
- Cloud access security
- Single sign-on
- Email security
- Website and app security
- Network security
The above list is by no means exhaustive and with many other features are available, the best options for your business depend on the use case.
2. Flexibility
Cloud computing allows your IT department to be more flexible by freeing up their time, allowing them to focus on other pertinent tasks. When they are longer responsible for maintaining a vast onsite IT infrastructure, IT teams can operate in a more nimble and precise way, leaving the task of managing any hardware to the cloud service provider.
Furthermore, it is far easier to scale up your IT systems on cloud platforms like SugarCloud than in on-premise infrastructure. As the business grows and your sales team expands, Sugar Sell enables you to actively track daily customer data including emails, account updates, and social media messages—all while reducing the burden of maintaining an on-premise infrastructure, for which company-wide upgrades can be costly and time-consuming.
3. Mobility
Employees who are away from the office often encounter difficulties when they remotely access a database located in an on-premise system. By contrast, the SugarCloud platform allows employees to easily access your database both remotely and most importantly, via an app on mobile devices. The platform provides tailored mobile solutions to support a fluid and intuitive user environment. As a result, mobile cloud computing:
- Enhances your customer’s service
- Boosts sales
- Eases access to sales material
- Supports live updating to contact records
Migrating IT systems to the cloud is one of the easiest ways modern businesses streamline operations to gain a competitive edge. Despite the rising popularity of cloud computing, many companies still use traditional on-premise IT systems. Using SugarCloud enabled systems provides your business with a unique advantage over competitors—enabling process improvements, workflow streamlining, and increased connectivity wherever work happens.
4. Data Recovery and Loss Prevention
In an increasingly connected world, any business can suffer from downtime and lost productivity as a result of cybersecurity attacks and connection interruptions. While many businesses seek to control each and every aspect of their system security, disaster can strike anyone. As a result, brand reputation could suffer, making these system compromises not only costly in system integrity but for a company’s public persona.
While you may not be able to predict disasters, a solid platform like SugarCloud provides the security protocols required to ensure you don’t waste valuable time. Using both clustering, redundancies, and backed by the most reliable cloud provider, SugarCloud not only protects your data with enhanced security including SOC2 compliance but boasts a downtime of less than 1% in all supported regions.
Cloud computing helps eliminate the risk of permanently losing your data due to any of myriad causes, including:
- Theft
- Hardware destruction
- Computer viruses
- Software corruption
- Human error
Using cloud computing as the platform for your software eliminates the risk of someone physically stealing or destroying your data. Moreover, SugarCloud backs up your data so that you can recover quickly and easily.
5. Increased Collaboration and Insight
Collaboration and teamwork are essential to any business regardless of if you’re a company of ten or ten thousand. The SugarCloud platform facilitates collaboration by enabling team members to access relevant Sugar products easily and securely. Moreover, some cloud platforms enable collaborative social spaces to enhance your employees’ level of engagement and connect to other software you use throughout your business.
Cloud computing solutions have also changed the way businesses provide customer service, with tools like Sugar Serve providing a dedicated way to address customer concerns without risking their business. With features like SugarLive, customer service agents are further enabled by outstanding services like Amazon Connect to record voice and chat conversations to customer records.
Additionally, while data is now an essential currency in the modern economy, the vast amount and complexity make it difficult to parse. Internet users create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. A goldmine of actionable information, it is extremely difficult to sift through it all to find the information that is most relevant to your business but still a valuable endeavor.
Thankfully, leading providers of cloud-enabled software like SugarCRM products on SugarCloud integrate analytics into their solutions so that you can see all the relevant information at a glance. For example, SugarCRM provides marketing automation software that lets you track data and instantly generate customized reports. The best-performing businesses use such processes to improve their methods and develop data-backed plans to meet the company’s goals.
6. Quality Control
Consistently high-quality reports are essential for the success of your business, and nothing is likelier to throw a wrench in the generation process than poorly-controlled documentation. At best, manually hunting for the correct and up-to-date information ends up being a huge time-sink; at worst, the information is unfindable or altogether wrong.
Fortunately, SugarCloud makes this process easy. Documents are stored in a central location and uniform format, making version control issues a thing of the past. Consequently, your company’s database maintains data consistency as everyone accesses the same up-to-date documents. Employees can obtain the most recent version of a document, thus avoiding not only endless frustration but any loss in productivity as well.
7. Cost Savings
By opting to go with a cloud-based CRM, you avoid the need for on-premises servers. While cloud-based systems have monthly subscription fees, going with an off-site system means that you get to dodge the significant initial costs, maintenance requirements, and energy demands that an on-site CRM server brings.
SugarCloud’s system updates automatically, eliminating the need for your IT staff to perform the time-consuming task of manually implementing large-scale updates of your business’ entire IT infrastructure. Your IT team can now spend more time on the department’s essential and productive tasks. In fact, many businesses have reported needing fewer internal IT resources as a result of automatic updates and other benefits of cloud systems.
The pricing of cloud-based systems varies depending on the features and capabilities that a provider offers within their pricing plans. Some of the features you should expect to receive from a cloud-based CRM service include:
- Contact management
- Client interaction tracking
- Database management
- Email management
- Lead management
- Sales automation
Once you’re sure that the CRM you’re considering has these essential features, pricing is going to come down to some of the modular aspects and how they fit the needs of your business. For example, comprehensive solutions like Sugar Market provide for unlimited users, whereas a more targeted one like Sugar Serve operates on a per-user-per-month model, but may cost less for smaller firms. Consider, too, what your support needs are, as this is another aspect that can vary significantly from plan to plan.
Different cloud service providers design pricing plans that bundle features in different ways. With some research, you can find a pricing plan that matches your needs and budget. And given the many ways in which cloud-based IT facilitates the streamlining of your business, there is certainly value to be found.
Empower Your Marketing, Sales, and Service Teams with SugarCloud
For decades, one of the main challenges in operating a successful business is setting up and maintaining a robust IT network infrastructure that matches the organization’s needs and budget. Through running an IT department, companies encountered various problems, including inadequate data security, lack of scalable IT solutions, geographical limitations, and unreliable or expensive backup and recovery solutions.
SugarCloud continues to provide an effective and inexpensive solution to these and more IT-related business problems as a strong platform for Sugar solutions that don’t add to the overall cost of the software. Catering to the unique needs of modern businesses, SugarCloud offers several benefits—reliable security, flexibility, mobile access, and backup and recovery support. With a platform reliability of over 99%, SugarCloud offers Sugar customers stability that is unparalleled in the industry.
Furthermore, as an increasing number of businesses adopt collaborative approaches to their workflows and adapt to remote employees, cloud computing offers additional ways to remain connected. Cloud computing supports these modern business needs by letting employees easily and securely access the company’s software infrastructure and database remotely.
Contact the SugarCRM sales team now and get the competitive advantage you need at a price you can afford.
