Into the Cloud

By Lindsay
Moving to the cloud has been an exercise in some frustration mainly because of all the alternatives available to the small business owner.  These were the requirements when deciding on what to use.

• First - the major applications must be local.  Not only for local support, and native speakers, but also because there are some legal requirements for accounting systems that the data must be held in New Zealand.  So this lead to the adoption of Xero (www.xero.co.nz).  
• Second - the major applications must be cost effective.  Cloud based systems usually have a monthly subscription, some based on users, some not.
• Third - There must be alternative methods of accessing the information.  This inludes notebooks, web browsers, smartphones.

To support growth within the business I needed applications that would track and manage my main areas of business.  These are:

• Jobs, time, other costs.
• Computer monitoring - real time, with alerts and remote access capabilities.
• Easy KPI generation.

I'm confident that I made the right choices when it comes to the applications that I selected, and I havent been dissapointed yet!