Five Ways the Cloud can rev up Operational Excellence for your Startup or Small Business

Five Ways the Cloud can rev up Operational Excellence for your Startup or Small Business

by | Business, Business Operations, Management, Performance, Productivity

For the past year, I have been experimenting quite successfully in running my business through the cloud. I am no techie and this was not a planned model initially. However, I was clear that I needed to enable a flexible working environment for my team and ensure that my capital expenditure stays as close to zero as possible in the early stages. I had tried out tools like Box, Dropbox, Evernote and Skype for my personal use and loved the flexibility and ease-of-use they provided. So, it was a natural leap for me to integrate them into my business as well. And now that the business is growing, I went to my go-to-person for all things technical for advice on an IT plan and investments needed (I still don’t own a single server and that “felt” kind of uncomfortable when I remembered the huge server rooms at the businesses I have worked in). Turns out that I have actually been doing it right and have been part of a trend that is the new normal 🙂 . After I finished my feel-good pat-my-own-back session, I requested Shashwat, my go-to person, techie geek turned cloud solutions SME to write down what he told me in the form of a blog post so that I can share this with everyone. Here is his take on how cloud computing is not just for the biggies but is also a boon for startups and small businesses.

Software as a service (SaaS) has been around since the 60s, when IBM and other mainframe providers introduced the concept of time-shared computing. ISVs would host their code on remote servers providing functionality to enterprises on a subscription basis. With the advent of the internet and its increased adoption in the 90s, it gave way to a more efficient and ever-present way of computing, popularly known as cloud computing.

With higher internet speeds at reduced costs, cloud computing can be a boon for your start-up. Here’s why –

1)   Productivity on the go – Productivity has been revolutionized with the arrival of personal devices. The information worker has gone desk-less and enterprise IT has been consumerized. With the Bring-your-own-device culture gaining popularity in major conglomerates, it only makes sense for startups enable their workforce with such power. With cloud storage and cloud apps, the information worker can be more agile and help the startup be nimble. There are multiple platforms/vendors to choose from, to suit your organizational needs. From software development to basic word processing, all workloads can be hosted in the cloud. And with unlimited storage options, all you projects/files are omnipresent – all the time.

2)   Reduced capital and operational costs – The world’s best companies started in a garage, and not with a lot of money. Investing in a resilient IT infrastructure might not be an option available to every aspiring startup. The costs of deploying and maintaining an IT backbone, could be an expensive deal even for a small startup. For many, investing the money to the business would make more sense. The cloud helps you run your IT, without having to worry about maintaining or upgrading it – You will always have the latest and greatest. Thick clients are a thing of the past now, thus helping you reduce the need for expensive end user computing. Effectively, all you need is a browser J

3)   À la carte Computing – Efficient use of IT hardware is always a concern for enterprises. You don’t want to under-size the environment to save cost and run into performance issues, OR invest a lot of money to buy real beefy hardware and have them sit underutilized. With fast growing organizations, scalability becomes a constant issue and a drain on your finances. Enter – CLOUD – you use what you pay for, you pay for what you use. The user-feature based licensing model, helps companies to pick and choose what they want to use, without having to worry about hardware costs. Scalability??? Not a problem, you can scale your user base on the fly with a few clicks of the mouse.

 4)   Boosted Collaboration – Audio/video conferencing, file sharing and web apps – 90% of my workday is spent on these workloads. With teams becoming more virtual now, geo locations cannot be a hindrance to productivity. Efficient use of the cloud tools ensures that people collaborate successfully. You never have to email a single project file back and forth. Multiple people can consume and work on the same data from different locations simultaneously. Business intelligence and reporting has been simplified to a few clicks.

 5)   Increased continuity of service – “The cloud is always on” – You can get to it from anywhere, anytime. Businesses spend a lot of money to ensure that their systems are resilient and highly available, increasing the overall complexity of the environment, with constantly increasing operational costs. A subscription based model eliminates the need for a business to plan for unplanned service interruptions. You pay a one-time subscription fee, the vendor takes care of everything else. Many cloud vendors out there also offer financially backed service level agreements for mission critical workloads, so you can concentrate on your business worry free.

So, there you go – Cloud solutions enable you to concentrate on your business and run IT, quite practically with a credit card. 🙂

Cloud Tools/Solutions for your reference:

Cloud storage:

Onedrive for business – https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/business/

Box.Net for business – https://www.box.com/business/

Google drive – https://drive.google.com/ob?usp=web_ww_intro

Business email and productivity:

Microsoft Office 365 for small business – http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans-FX102918419.aspx?tab=1

Google apps for business – http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/

Unified collaboration:

Skype for business – http://www.skype.com/en/business/

Microsoft Lync online – http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/lync/meeting-software-compare-lync-plans-FX103842081.aspx

Google hangout – http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/

Social for the enterprise:

Yammer – www.yammer.com

Chatter – https://www.salesforce.com/chatter/overview/

Today’s post is by Shashwat Mohapatra. Sash is a Client Success Manager and has about 10 years’ experience working as a trusted advisor with large Fortune 500 enterprise organizations in various business verticals around the globe, focused on helping enterprise customers consistently improve IT health, drive successful projects and migration deployments.

Did you find this post useful? How have you used cloud for your business? We would love to hear back and learn from you.

Five Essentials to Consider before venturing into Entrepreneurship

Five Essentials to Consider before venturing into Entrepreneurship

by | Business, Career, Life, Managing Yourself

It has been a year since I went solo. Fifteen years into my career and I would rate this past year as the most satisfying and fulfilling year of my life. Hard work has been a common theme through all the years but nothing beats the satisfaction levels and the thrills of trying out something of your own and nurturing it to growth. However, entrepreneurship is not all fun and joy. There are ups and downs, small victories and big fails and we need a special mind-set and support system to ensure that we are not bouncing like a yo-yo along with our venture. Keeping the balance is absolutely essential.

I have written about the mind-shifts that I had to make within myself a few months after I plunged in an earlier post. For this annual event, I asked a very special woman, an amazing mother and a successful entrepreneur – Devina Mahapatra – who has been there, done that – to share with my readers and me on what helped her survive and thrive on her entrepreneurship journey. What are the essentials to consider before venturing into entrepreneurship, that we need to have in place to succeed? And here is her take:

A few years back, I found myself taking time off from the corporate world to dedicate to raising our kids. My goal: be home till the younger one is two. At this time, I was only expecting my first. While the joys of mommyhood is incomparable to anything else I had experienced, I got restless very quickly because there’s only so much you can fuss over an infant. By the time my first-born was a year old, I had started a business. And before I knew it, my husband had quit his high-profile IT position in a leading upcoming biotechnology firm to join the business. We quickly were living the entrepreneur lifestyle – very different from the regular 9-5 positions we had both held in the past. The accolades as well as the trials were rewarding. After seven years, our first business was sold, and my husband went on to start on his second, thereby entering the coveted group of serial entrepreneurs. Once you have a taste of being a business owner, it’s virtually impossible to turn back. However, I believe that without a few ground rules and work ethics, we would have burnt out before giving success a true chance.

Here’s my list of 5 Essentials to consider before venturing into entrepreneurship:

Essentials #1: Have unconditional support of your significant other –

By support, I mean holistic support – be it mental (challenging business strategy), emotional (provide encouragement when things are slow), physical (waking up to care for the kids at night) or public relations (keeping a calm composure and positive outlook when you just lost your biggest client). Confide in and communicate with your significant other – Err on the side of more than less. No one’s a mind reader. By unconditional, I mean in great times and terrible ones…alike.

Essentials #2: Don’t be a stranger to the facts –

Do research, and then some more. Know your competition. Know your product/service. Know the demand. Interview other business owners. Set a timeline target that’s realistic. Research goes a long way in saving you time and money.

Essentials #3: Know yourself –

Know your personality type. Running a business needs constant self-motivation in good days and bad. It takes an enormous amount of self driven discipline. Ask yourself if the business is enough motivation to get you out of bed every morning – for times to come. If yes, you’re a natural. If not, keep a motivation plan ready. Be accountable to yourself.

Essentials #4: Surround yourself with positive thinkers –

The easiest thing for people to say is no. Surround yourself with positive thinkers who emit positive energy. You will need it. Don’t hesitate to distance yourself from nay-sayers, mindless gossip and anything that doesn’t add value.

Essentials #5: Meditate Daily –

If you don’t meditate already, start anyway. Running a business will just get the universe as close to your soul as you allow. Meditation enables that. Practicing the art of maintaining peace and calm within yourself will pay off big time.

Are you thinking of going solo, starting a company or just taking a break to think about a career change? How are you preparing for this big shift in your life? What are the other essentials to consider before venturing into entrepreneurship ? Devina and I would love to hear back and learn from you.

Guest Post author : Devina Mahapatra

Pic Courtesy : Sukanya Rath

Five Tips to make Working From Home work for You

Five Tips to make Working From Home work for You

by | Business, Career, Management, Performance, Productivity, working from home, World of Work

Working from home is a privilege that a few enjoy. It is usually perceived by both employer and employee as a perk of the job and is an important aspect of workplace flexibility. Many organizations are slowly realizing the benefits of a flexible/remote work policy and the win-win situations of implementing such policies (http://mashable.com/2011/10/10/remote-workforce-changing/). You may be your own company or a cog in the wheel of a large company; from experience, I have found that it is quite possible to be even more productive working from your home-office than from a cubicle. Distraction-free environment, commute, office politics, flexibility of schedule all contribute to enhanced productivity but the focus of today’s blog is how to get the best out of yourself when you are working from home :

Tip # 1 Integrity: You are in a position of trust and with Trust comes Responsibility. As Oprah has said –”Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” Self-discipline is key to ensuring that you are at your productive best. You are your own manager in this scenario and have to take ownership of your work output. Set daily, weekly and monthly goals and STICK to them come what may.

Tip # 2 Time Management: It is very easy to lose track of time when you don’t have to punch in time and out time. Having more flexibility in your schedule is great, but it also makes it harder as there are more options on balancing time slots between personal and work time. Create your work hours based on what works best for you, your customers and your team. These hours may change from time to time but it is important to block them. For example – I work best late night, so I schedule my highest priority tasks that need my concentration the most for my time slots in the night. You may want to use a timer initially to keep track of time and reward yourself when your timer goes off with a short break. You will find yourself less distracted. And know when to stop – don’t let work takeover your life! Find the techniques that work best for you in tracking your most valuable resource – time!

Tip # 3 Work – Space: Keep aside a specific space – a room is best – dedicated as your work zone. It helps change the state of your mind from “I am at home” to “I am at work”. You work-space should be sacrosanct – no distractions allowed, enforce a “closed door” policy if needed. Keep your desk uncluttered and surround yourself with stuff that helps you focus – maybe fresh notepads and pens, work board, good lighting, coffee maker, music.

Tip # 4 Tools and Infrastructure: When you work from home, you are your own IT, admin and HR helpdesk. Even if your company is not paying you for it, good infrastructure and tools are totally a great investment to help you overcome irritations and productivity loss. A comfortable office chair, power backup, a good speakerphone, a printer/scanner and copier, headphones and microphone are some essentials. Do maintenance on your laptop/desk top regularly to ensure best performance. Back up your data and use a good antivirus solution.

Tip # 5 Communication and Collaboration: This becomes even more critical when you are working remote – you have to make up for face time by consciously increasing your interaction with your team and peers through intensive communication and collaboration. Pick up the phone and talk to people more, take every opportunity to collaborate, create mailing groups to inform and be informed – just because you are not physically present in the office doesn’t mean you can’t be a present and active member of your team. And ultimately remember that your work has to speak out loud for you, be “visible” through excellence in your work.

Finally I leave you with these words from Abraham Lincoln in a letter he wrote in 1851 :

If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work, you cannot get along anywhere.

— Abraham Lincoln

What strategies have worked for you in increasing your productivity when you work from home ? Do share.