Cloud is a technology that brings ease of doing business, accessibility, security, storage, and many other perks for any kind of business across the globe. From large to micro businesses, the adoption of cloud-based services has been growing for a long time now.
India has around 63.4 million units of SMEs (small and medium enterprises) which account for approximately 30% of India’s total GDP. In Indian SMEs, the adoption of cloud technology grew mainly due to two reasons, one was the race towards digitization and the other was the pandemic. As per the data provided by EY India, 39% of the medium-sized companies and 38% of the small companies embarked on their cloud journey during the pandemic.
However, this data shows that only a small number of SMEs have adopted cloud services so far. Cloud services have been proved to be a boon for any business to grow and sustain in the intensely competitive markets, and yet the Indian SMEs have a lot to catch up on in this regard. Let’s understand why these SMEs should swipe right on cloud services and how the cloud can help them to achieve their dream business targets.
Ease of Doing Business
After incorporating cloud services into their businesses, SMEs can get much more leeway and expertise in structuring their business operations and in maintaining the right momentum for future developments to take place. Services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure offer an array of pay-as-you-go cloud services for businesses that can help in their overall market growth and lead to an increase in their market demand; consequently, increasing their earnings and their profits. SMEs can shape their business ideas, design their systems to start small and build on the automatic scalability provided by the cloud environment. A well-designed cloud delivery platform will also allow SMEs to automatically scale up during peak highs and scale down during the lows.
Money Management
By installing cloud-based services for their daily operations like accounting, employee profiling, attendance, inventory, etc., firms can benefit greatly as the cost of these services is much lower than that of the traditional ways of doing these things. By deploying software-as-a-service (SaaS) for these operations, an SME can save money and use it instead for the other requisites that are essential for their development and growth.
Time Efficiency
SMEs can deploy IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS which can save them an ample amount of time by providing services that can cut down on the man-hours and the tedious work that goes into keeping these operations running smoothly. The cloud can save the time of the workers and employees by providing on-premises services and cloud services have also made the work-from-home culture very feasible and accessible to everyone.
Flexibility
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 globally, most offices and workplaces had to adopt the work-from-home culture. Due to the very same reasons, almost every SME had to embark on their cloud journey. The cloud provides the flexibility to work from any place through SaaS and PaaS services like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and so on. It helps SMEs in cutting down on their infrastructure costs and enables them to utilize their time and resources for the other elements that are a requisite for their growth and sustainability.
Security
Being small-sized or medium-sized businesses, security has always been the primary concern for SMEs. Cyber security breaches have also had a negative impact on SMEs, making them hesitant to opt for the digitization of their operations. However, deploying cloud services can actually provide better security mechanisms to these SMEs. Cloud service providers can provide a robust security framework to secure the SMEs’ resources and applications, which then turns into a direct benefit for them as they get to use an app-based security service for the safety and growth of their business.
Robust Networking
SMEs generally are agile and adaptable businesses, made up of teams that include their internal employees, contract workers, and their outsourced partners. By deploying cloud services, SMEs can develop a robust network that seamlessly connects their workers, their clients, and their business partners. The cloud can also provide a feedback mechanism to the consumers and business partners of an SME, which is always a good thing and is essential for the growth of any business.
We can conclude by saying that SMEs should definitely adopt and incorporate cloud services into their businesses if they aim to keep pace with the rapidly changing and developing markets, as the only way to grow and develop in the current scenario is by riding the technology wave and staying ahead of the curve.
