Your company is expanding or most of the team members working remotely. Or your accounting software in your desktop has just crashed and data is lost. These scenarios forced you to look for better Software as a Service solution for your organization. You need to find the right software out of thousands of specialized solutions on the internet. So, which one would be the right choice? At Cloudify.Asia, we have been using various cloud software such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), e-Signature and Productivity Software. Thus, we would like to share some of our tips in choosing the solution.
TIP 1: Get Software To Work For You. This is one of the biggest mistakes that I have often seen in large organizations when they use Software as a Service. The cloud software supposes to help your team members to be better at their work through its automation and easier tracking. So, don’t choose a cloud software where you need to change most of the organization’s process to fit the software. It supposes to be the other way around. The software supposes to help you to manage existing processes.
TIP 2: Explore Local Cloud Software Too. Often time, we are skeptical at smaller local companies’ cloud software. However, these companies or Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) excel at local customized process. This is apparent for payroll solution, human resource solution and industry specific solution. These vendors may be able to react faster and even accommodate to some of your requests compare to large companies. Thus, do include local vendors in your comparison and research.
TIP 3: Get Good Support and Response. Cloud software features are not everything. If you have great features but lousy support, it may drive you up to your wall. It all starts from sales engagement. A typical good solution has sales templates and standardized packages for you to choose from. While some has extra guidance for onboarding, post sales support in term of bugs fixing is equally critical. We can’t expect a perfect software but certainly should expect good customer experience.
TIP 4: Separate The Need and The Want. Automation will enable your company to move faster. You realize this and your wish list of features keep expanding. However, do be mindful that customized features would be costly and are slow to be implemented. Thus, separating the needs and wants would be helpful when choosing the right cloud software. Most of the cloud software segregate the price tiers through the features bundling. By doing this, you may even save money on features that may not be critical at that juncture.
TIP 5: Ensure Software Is Secured. Often time, someone tell me that they are worry about data on the cloud. A good cloud software allows the customers to manage their own data securely. This mean the vendor and admin will not be able to access to your data without your permission. Then, the database that store the data should be encrypted by default as well. In a properly designed multi-tenancy cloud software, they would not be able to access your data without your access. One of the ways to make sure of this is through the vendor’s certifications. Cloud software that complies to standards would have much better security than any software that is hosted in your desktop or even in your server.
That’s all. With this knowledge, we hope you will be able to choose right cloud software for your company. From cloudy to certainty.
Written by Gavin Loh (Chief Opportunity Creator)