Documents and business processes in the cloud

Blog: Flokzu

The model Software as a Service (usually shortened SaaS) is used to refer to cloud-based tools. SaaS has many advantages over on premise software, which caused the model to grow dramatically in all kinds of organizations all over the world.

Key features and benefits of the cloud include:

It’s easier, the software is simply used without requiring of maintenance or configurations.
You only pay what you use. No great initial investment is required.
You can test the software before buying it, which significantly reduces the risk of buying something that does not fit your organization.
It’s safer, since the data are stored in specialized data centers, with international safety standards of all kinds, which usually exceed those we have in our enterprise.
Easy to use and the information can be reached from all over the world, at any time, via Internet.

This has been greatly implemented in some niches such as e-mail (GMail is the best example), sales management (e.g. SalesForce), managing contact and networking (e.g. LinkedIn).

Are we willing to put the core of our organizational processes up in the cloud? These processes contain the core of our daily work and have sensitive or confidential information.

In addition, these processes involve documents. Are we ready to put the most important documents in the cloud?

One step ahead

In medium and small businesses, many of the organization’s processes are managed through spreadsheets (e.g. Excel). Any employee of the organization can use and create these spreadsheets. However, this tool isn’t suited for a growing company. As the organization grows, the documents and sheets become an obstacle. Others prefer a different tool: emails. Everybody can share information quickly via email but that is absolutely unmanageable as the number of people grows.

What if we could run these processes in a specific tool which enables shared documents? Naturally, you might think that this option is rather expensive, difficult to implement or might take months.

That’s not true. With a BPM solution in the cloud we can do all this with the same benefits as a spreadsheet or email: easy and fast. But the documents are centralized and can be shared.

For example: business processes can be managed through spreadsheets. As we move forward into the business cycle, we add information to that spreadsheet. Clearly this works with a limited amount of data. But how much do we lose if we dismiss a business opportunity? Or what if we don’t answer a customer queries? All these elements have a direct impact on the short term (fewer sales) and on the long term (fewer customers).

Safety matters

Safety is a crucial aspect, especially when it comes to processes that are the heart of our business and the documents involved in them.

Since safety matters, the location where processes are stored also matters. Our processes will be much safer if they are stored in a specific tool for this purpose, in a data-center with international safety standards.

For example: what if the disk of the PC or server that stores the spreadsheet with the data breaks down? Or what if the file is corrupted and we can’t open it? All commercial decisions would be a risk and this could jeopardize the future of the organization.

React quickly to survive

How fast can your organization react to change? The answer to this question may decide the future of your business.

When processes are stored in people’s minds, it’s extremely difficult to change them, let alone do it fast. However, if they are modeled by a diagram, the change is immediate. Simply change the drawing. Clearly, this should be done without the need of programming, simple and fast: BPM in the cloud is the solution.

For example: What if we decide that commercial opportunities must be revised by the CEO? We should explain to the whole commercial team that there is a new requirement. Probably many mistakes will be made. But if we change the automated process, we will ensure that whenever necessary, commercial opportunities will be reviewed by the CEO.

Conclusion

Managing a Medium or Small Business through emails and spreadsheets will eventually damage the efficiency. Flokzu doesn’t require IT knowledge, isn’t expensive nor time-consuming. It uses the SaaS model, delivering the simplicity and flexibility of spreadsheets and emails, but with additional benefits, such as: security, low risk, low initial investment, growth potential and scalability in the cloud.

The post Documents and business processes in the cloud appeared first on Flokzu.