Cloud technology has revolutionized the way we work—from how we collaborate and access data to how quickly companies can respond to their customers. Most importantly, the cloud helps teams stay nimble and innovative, which is especially important during this time of exceptional unpredictability and change. Businesses need to evolve at a breakneck pace, and cloud computing is central to adapting and changing quickly and successfully.
While the cloud’s advantages are well known, how (and how quickly) you implement this technology and empower teams to use it will determine your business’s ability to realize them.
Explore these four tips to help your business run better on the cloud:
Tailor your tech to meet team needs
Cloud solutions work best when they work for everyone, regardless of the team, its size, or their technical prowess. And the people who use the technology to perform their jobs every day—your employees—are just as important as your customers when building your new cloud-enabled enterprise.
Set up your tools to provide teams with the flexibility to gather insights they need now and in the future. For example, create dashboards with today’s pertinent metrics (like page views, bounce rates, or cart conversions) but keep the option to build new ones should different trends catch their eyes or interests tomorrow. The cloud makes custom dashboard creation easy and affordable, allowing your teams to report faster and track the success of their innovations.
Further Reading
Designing dashboards and tools with teams in mind to increase worker engagement, decrease errors and onboarding timeframes, and improve productivity
Make your tools talk to each other
Just as employees collaborate across teams, the tools they use need to collaborate as well. When transitioning to the cloud, think about what programs you’re currently using and how they can be connected to the cloud to optimize workflows and collaboration.
Integrating your code base with Slack, for example, makes it easy for engineers to share projects with product managers, receive feedback, and deploy code within Slack’s user-friendly interface. With new tools being released every day, you may need to add other products into your mix. Integrating current services with new ones will allow you more control over your processes and create efficiencies.
Having all your tools talk to each other will enable wider transparency across the organization. This allows room for unexpected insights to emerge, giving your teams the freedom to innovate and experiment more broadly.
Further Reading
Integrate distributed systems and serverless applications with less code
Find the right cloud partner
Those already on the cloud know it provides on-demand technology services over the internet, including computing power, storage, and advanced database services. Since its services are often pay-as-you-go, it takes the burden off of businesses of every type, size, and industry to buy, own, and maintain servers and networking hardware. With the ability to scale up and down services depending on the scope of your projects, the cloud helps you cut costs and be nimble to pivot your tech to match shifts in strategy and team needs.
Review your prospective or current cloud-service provider and their ability to meet your teams’ needs. The right cloud partner will maximize the benefits of the cloud for your business—resulting in cost savings, agility, scalability, and future-proofing.
Further Reading
8 business drivers that motivate cloud migration
Let your customers create their experience
One of the biggest business opportunities for modernizing your technology infrastructure with the cloud is improving your ability to capture, sort, and analyze unprecedented amounts of customer engagement data. That enables businesses to create more personalized experiences to boost customer engagement and retention.
For example, the digital sports media company Pulselive incorporated platform tools that help tailor video recommendations based on viewing history. Serving up more of what viewers want to see has helped one of their clients, a premier European football club, increase video views by 20% and reach millions of fans around the globe.
With the right cloud partner and tools, any company can create personalized experiences driven by secure data. While mapping your tech transition, consider how your customers and their product experience can be improved through personalization and ensure your cloud partner has the tools to help you do it.
Further Reading
Amazon launches Personalize, a fully-managed AI-powered recommendation service
A bright new world of collaboration and innovation awaits on the cloud, as long as you understand how to use it. Build tools and systems tailored for your employees, prioritize thoughtful app integration, find a cloud partner that can flex with your team’s needs, and let the captured data drive better experiences for your customers.