For One Small Business, Cloud Computing Is a Game-Changer

Small business expert Rhonda Abrams claims that small businesses don’t need to be early adopters of the latest technology. She likes to “leverage technology, not love technology.”

But cloud computing, also known as Software as a Service (SaaS), is different, she says.

Abrams says cloud computing represents a “sea change” in how we do business, comparable to what the Internet promised in 1997. Just like small businesses needed to embrace the Internet, get on email, and build websites then, she says, they need to begin leveraging the cloud now.

Cloud computing is the idea that instead of buying and installing software to run your business, you can “rent” it as you need it over the Internet. And Abrams claims that small businesses that move to the cloud sooner will have a number of competitive advantages over the laggards.

(By the way, it's clear that many small businesses are still wary of cloud computing. Check out my recent post on 7 Cloud Computing Objections -- Debunked! to learn more about why these objections rarely hold water today.)

I’ve heard that before, but typically the argument ends there, without specifying exactly what those competitive advantages might be. So I asked her to share some specifics, and she didn’t disappoint.

In addition to being a proponent of cloud computing, she also also CEO of her own business: The Planning Shop. And Abrams says that cloud computing is already making a big difference:

One example is in her company’s email newsletters. By switching from an on-premises solution to cloud-based Emma, she’s gone from having a trained staffer taking days to send every email to letting anyone do it in 20 minutes. That means it’s so easy to send special announcements that she’s upped her email frequency from 9 times a year to 24 times a year.

Plus, she now gets advanced analytics that tell her how newsletter “open rates” have increased, letting her test the effectiveness of different subject lines. The service also lets her use automated “trigger marketing,” where a prospect who’s opened an email but not bought anything can get a coupon encouraging to them to make an order.

Abrams acknowledges that her costs per email have gone up, but she insists that TCO for her email campaigns is much lower.

Abrams has also moved The Planning Shop’s payroll to Intuit Online Payroll (formerly PayCycle), saving $1,000 a year and giving every employee the ability to instantly check their pay, deductions, and other information.

Because cloud apps run in a Web browser, they work on virtually any platform. That’s especially important because small businesses tend use lots of contractors, who may not use the same systems. “The last thing I want to do is buy computers for my contractors,” Abrams laughs.

Finally, Abrams claims that moving to the cloud has saved her company time, money, and hassle on software upgrades. She lauds cloud-computing’s subscription-based recurring-revenue business model for both vendors and customers. In the traditional software model, vendors survive by selling upgrades, so are incented to hoard needed fixes and enhancements for the next release. Cloud vendors, on the other hand, are incented for getting improvements to their subscribers as quickly as possible.

Abrams has written a book on cloud computing, Bringing the Cloud Down to Earth, available as a free ebook from Dell.