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For the average American, you know once you move your precious family photos, creative projects, or health records to the cloud that you could never go back. That security of knowing no flood, fire, theft, or computer crash can take your memories and work away from you is truly priceless. Now consider this on a grander scale. Many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are reluctant to move to the cloud because they believe it will be too expensive for its worth. In reality, cloud services cut costs by an average of 36% and allow companies to experience between 2.3% and 6.9% higher revenue growth compared to businesses that don’t move to the cloud.
Justin Egbunu, a cloud optimization expert, specializes in automation, product inventory management, and cost reduction strategies for businesses. In today’s economy, many SMBs find it hard to keep up with ever-evolving technology, potentially leaving them in the dust as other, larger companies charge full steam ahead. As overwhelming as finding sustainable and scalable technology solutions can be, it’s an essential part of keeping up in the modern world. Justin’s work aims to give smaller organizations a competitive edge by leveraging affordable cloud solutions to their advantage and reducing operational costs. With the right technology, these businesses can increase productivity, shrink waste, and foster sustainable long-term growth.
“Most times smaller businesses don’t even know that half their problems can be solved with cloud solutions that already exist within the market,” Justin explains. “Over the next five years, we can expect to see the cloud being the backdrop to all innovations and policy for infrastructure development. Businesses will likely find that networking and communication on the whole will be made easier with greater adoption of the cloud. But these SMBs need empathy in their quest to grow.” Humans, like all living things, are built to grow and change in response to our environment, and with the switch to the cloud comes countless benefits with the proper education and support.
One major issue affecting most industries nowadays is a surge in supply chain disruptions. Businesses of all sizes struggle to maintain efficiency and consistent flow of revenue when their product is impacted by the supply chain crisis, but fortunately growing cloud technology and predictive analysis tools can help businesses create more resilient operations. Justin says that in his experience, every supply chain business needs a business mapping of its processes, as the right cloud technology can handle such disruptions and the data provided can help organizations understand and forecast potential issues before they even occur. These are concerns that, while daunting, are able to be relatively mollified with the right technology.
Cloud-driven solutions are also the key to bridging the gap that is the labor shortage within technology and logistics, but this won’t work without simplification of cloud technologies to make them more accessible. “We have to ask ourselves where the need is,” Justin says. “We shouldn’t be replacing human workers, rather we should be modifying roles and responsibility to achieve our goals. The first step is to drive inclusivity of cloud solutions so that we can promote collaboration with the older generation and diversify use of the cloud, ensuring we all equally derive benefits from the solution and little or no human jobs are lost.”
At the end of the day, the goal is to leverage technology to improve human lives – that’s what it’s always been about. Additionally, rural areas and underserved communities are often forgotten when it comes to access to modernized digital tools, creating a cycle that’s difficult to break. The adoption of cloud solutions in these areas, achieved by a local focus to move innovation down the line, will cultivate success across all of America enriching economic development for businesses of all sizes and in all areas.
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This content is brought to you by Melissa Moraes.
Photo provided by the author.
