Many businesses have embraced the digital age, and have taken on technology solutions that save time and money, and increase efficiency. But how is your business doing? Here are a few quick questions you can ask yourself, to see whether your business is digital savvy, or a digital dinosaur.
What storage solution do you use?
Do you store business information and vital data on a number of portable drives? Or, even worse, is it still sitting in a large filing cabinet? Using the cloud is a secure and cost effective way to keep your data safely stored. Just a few of the benefits include:
– Access. Data can be accessed 24/7 from any internet-enabled device.
– In the event of a disaster that takes out your office network or hard drives, your data in the cloud can be quickly accessed and restored.
– Flexibility. There’s no limit to space in the cloud. You only pay for as much as your business needs, and it’s a simple matter to get more as your business grows.
– Security. The lock on your filing cabinet is probably not all that secure, and portable drives can be damaged, or even stolen. With the cloud, your data can be encrypted and password protected.
Do you use still use fax machines?
It’s surprising in such a digital age that so many businesses still embrace the office fax machine. They are slow, require maintenance and chew up resources such as paper and toner. Plus, you also have to pay for the phone line. One simple way to resolve this is to switch over to a virtual fax solution.
With a virtual fax, you have an online account and a fax number. You send all faxes via the internet, and receive faxes as PDF email attachments in your inbox. You can also send multiple faxes at once, and get confirmation receipts back via email. That way you have peace of mind that your fax has gone through.
Your recipients won’t see any difference, as faxes still turn up on their fax machines as normal, but the benefits to you are enormous. You’re not physically tied down to the one location, but can send and receive a fax from anywhere. You’re not paying for long distance calls as everything goes through the Internet. Nor are you at the mercy of paper jams and engaged phone lines or simply stuck in a queue of others wanting to use the fax. It’s an agile, flexible, 24/7 system.
How easy is it to send large files?
If you’re still crashing your network and your client’s email servers when trying to send them large files, you’re definitely falling into the digital dinosaur rather than the digital savvy category. Instead of splitting documents up to email, or worse still calling the courier, you can send large files over the internet using the cloud. It’s simple to upload video or audio clips, images, or lengthy documents to the cloud, and then you simply send the recipient a download link.
If you’re a digital dinosaur you need to evolve quickly!
If you are still using antiquated business systems then it’s time to switch to viable online solutions. That old maxim ‘adapt or die’ certainly applies to business.