What is the cloud? What is cloud virtual storage? Is the cloud the right vehicle for us to improve our business processes? Can the cloud unlock our back office?
When I started at FiveCubits, f/k/a BMG Seltec, there were two items that I worked on pretty quickly. We were in a 1k square foot room and they didn’t have all of the storage that a growing company needed. No space for filing cabinets. Originally I had our contractor store all of the invoices as PDF on a shared drive that we could VPN into.
This VPN required accounting to log in and connect to the mainframe in California while I moved the rest of backoffice to Chicago. The VPN was used for the first year but this wasted minutes/hours a day/week. The CFO said look into Box.net (now box.com) and see what they have to offer. That was my first real look into the cloud for business.
Viewing demos, I also viewed material reviews on YouTube, talked to current users, talked to users of other solutions and after asking a few questions with their sales team and within a few months we made the decision to keep our documents on the Cloud. Still needed to test; test the file structure but that involved drawing it out and getting the auditors to review our process change/improvement. The longest time spent, was moving 2 years worth of PDFs over a weekend.
It did require some heavy lifting initially on our back office but it wasn’t impossible: to attach approvals, scan the invoices, change some processes. This was offset by the ability to review an invoice from a tablet, browser, or phone and this greatly reduced close compared to finding an invoice. I did it for the first year after the contractor left so it wasn’t impossible.
I was responsible for close for years, at prior a prior company in the traditional office with rows upon rows of filing cabinets. It involved locating the invoice, signing out, possibly making a copy, checking it back in. At the end of the year the firms needed to pack the documents up and bring them to storage.
On the Box “cloud” FiveCubits had over 50 gig of invoices. We could sync these invoices to our desktop if we wanted. We had folders for HR, Payroll, Finance, Audit, and about twenty others. This made close a snap, and finding the invoices for the audit was easy. Our team could just copy the needed invoices for their sample but that was it.
With the sale of FiveCubits it didn’t have enough tracking that was needed. Enter another cloud. We used RR Donnelly Venue and we could do so much more with it.
Say I wanted to grant access to an individual, Mr. ABC from 10:00 am to 11 pm. I could also say they could open it, but not print it. Their boss Mrs. XWZ could print it which would print it with a watermark and date.
They couldn’t forward it, but could print it. The due diligence team could send it if needed.
Having virtual storage/available on the cloud of our documents reduced close, reduced audit preparation, and reduced time to prep needed for sale.
Box.com, Dropbox, Google Drive, Sugar Sync, are a few of the different cloud storage that I have used, and properly designing they might be used for your company.
So which cloud is the best? Which ever cloud you use, you should evaluate their service and keep an open mind.
So what should I look for in the cloud virtual storage? There is a separate post on what you should be looking for.
Please leave your additional ideas in the comments section.