Did you know you can reduce your business’ expenses, IT requirements, maintenance and support costs, and server rack space by adapting to the cloud? More companies are realizing its value and are swiftly making the change.
But businesses are converting to the cloud for more reasons than just money and cost savings. From streamlining client communications to quickly scaling operations, here are how successful companies are using it.
Answer Client Questions
Oracle Is Getting Ahead Of The Competition When It Comes To Data
Call centers are prime to convert to the cloud to handle everything from phone calls to self-serve information. A tool like voice over internet protocol can help field calls remotely instead of housing customer service reps in one location. For example, Findley Davies uses the cloud in its own call center to help field questions about health benefits and retirement plans.
Clients can quickly exchange information around its nationwide offices to stay on top of real-time communication and changes. Companies that need to scale their customer service operations can use a service like Aspect Zipwire, which keeps companies running in the cloud with real-time software updates, personalized services and omni-channel benefits.
Managing Updates
Thousands of Macs In The Enterprise – How The Big Companies Roll
Apple has long stood as a pioneer in running its business and offering customers cloud storage and services. Apple customers use iCloud to store their photos, videos and computer back-ups that can be accessed without the headaches of hard drives and on-site servers. As iPhones and iPads flood the market, Apple uses the cloud to automatically update its operating systems and Siri’s capabilities. Customers are notified of updates and can automatically update their devices with a few clicks.
Analyzing Customer Behavior
Customer Attributes: The More You Know, The Better You Connect
Large brands and retailers may enjoy big paydays, but don’t necessarily know what their customers are really doing. Sending out surveys and studying sales only goes so far. Instead, use the cloud to analyze customer behavior over specific criteria from weekend sales to what people buy right before a storm.
Delhaize, operator of Food Lion and other grocery chains, used cloud computing to analyze if warm weather reduces the grilling of particular types of meats. Its combined analytical insights can help plan what to stock up on, what to reduce and how to better market their products when their customers want them most.
Increase Productivity
Microsoft’s Project Madeira turns Outlook into a small-business productivity hub
Coca-Cola made news when it ditched its Lotus Notes collaboration platform and instead adopted the cloud-based Microsoft Office 365. More than 25,000 employees made the switch within five months and the bottling retail giant found communication among its employees was simpler and easier — and the switch increased productivity. Coca-Cola found that its IT infrastructure simply couldn’t hold up against static collaboration tools. Moving to the cloud helped standardize the process and adapted in real-time despite time zones and improved better employee satisfaction.
Scaling
Amazon’s AWS Is Now A $7.3B Business As It Passes 1M Active Enterprise Customers
Growing too fast and having too much traffic may sound like a great problem to have, but it can crush companies before they really get off the ground. When Instagram launched, it was running off a single computer and was quickly overwhelmed with traffic. Utilizing the cloud to run the company helped scale up or down as traffic increases or drops off without the need to keep dozens of servers in-house.
