For most businesses, moving to the cloud is clearly the best solution. However, that doesn’t mean you should just jump in without thinking about several key considerations. Moving your budgeting to the cloud, rather than keeping it on-premises, offers several upgrades that you should understand before making the jump.

Here are the top 8 reasons why moving to the cloud is the best choice:

  1. Using the Cloud Costs Less

When some people see the monthly charges for business cloud services, they see those charges as an increase in their overhead costs. However, cloud services are less expensive than hosting the software locally in almost every case. Cloud providers, like one our favorites for budgeting software, Calumo, can “share” the infrastructure costs among several entities. On-premise services leave you holding the full bill for maintenance and upgrading. The monthly, or annual, fees end up costing you less in the long run.

  1. The Cloud Carries a Smaller Commitment

Buying software is a long-term commitment. You pay a large fee up-front and then you must stick with it or risk incurring another large spend to switch to another product. A good cloud provider will present several different software solutions and bring their vast experience to help you choose the right software at the start. Using the cloud also gives you the chance to have an annual, or even month-to-month, agreement.

  1. Greater Flexibility

Hosting your budgeting software yourself forces you to buy licenses for each user in your group. A cloud solution lets you add and remove users from month to month. No more dormant licenses.

  1. Match Your Value to Cost

By paying a monthly fee, and adding users as you need them, you’re matching your cost to your value. In fact, the value you receive will be above your cost for the life of your cloud corporate budgeting product.

  1. Security You Can Rely On

A common perception is that if your data is located inside your office, then it is safer than being “somewhere in the cloud”. This is often not true. The cloud provides several security improvements over an on-premise solution, including:

  • Chances are that the way you email data today is via the internet. Your email goes via the internet to get to the recipient, probably even if they sit across the desk from you. Emails aren’t always encrypted, which means they may be easy to intercept. This is not to imply that email is bad – it’s just one example to make you feel more at ease about how data is shared in the cloud, because with reliable cloud providers it is always encrypted.
  • If your on-premise server “dies”, you may lose all your data. By storing your data in the cloud, the risk is minimized to the point of almost being gone. Cloud companies employ the best, most advanced technologies to preserve data.
  • If you’re using a cloud environment, all the data transmitted is encrypted. That makes it secure. Your cloud provider has everything covered including a managed secure environment to store your data.
  • Spreadsheets full of data on laptops get stolen every day. Even if an Excel workbook is password protected, it takes an amateur hacker a matter of moments to get in.

  1. Easy Management

A good cloud corporate provider will not only understand corporate budgeting but will also be at the cutting edge of technology. Cloud companies will have the best hardware and software, systems, backups, security and connections. Your internal IT team’s strength is in keeping your internal systems running. Letting them stick to their strengths will make them more efficient and happier.

  1. The Peak of Performance

A good cloud corporate budgeting provider puts its customers’ databases on the latest and fastest tech they can get their hands on. That might mean a shift every month to new hardware. Imagine having to buy new hardware every month?

  1. You Want Access? You Got Access.

Getting secure access to your data from anywhere is vital. You don’t want to have to log into a VPN or have some buried portal system to get access to your numbers just because the data is on your premises. Most companies don’t have the required IT infrastructure set up to allow secure user access to their BI data. You’ll need access through many different mediums such as URL to web pages, Excel, and mobile devices; good cloud corporate budgeting vendors give access to your information via different devices, at no extra cost. The only requirement is you need to have internet access.

Contact Ryan Larsen @ Premier Computing (385-244-2546) to learn more!