Benefits of Moving Your ECM Solutions to The Cloud
Cloud-based software is becoming increasingly prevalent in both business and consumer spheres, with developers as large as Microsoft and Adobe developing cloud-based options for their office and creative suites. Business and digital transformation solutions are no exception to this trend, with solutions like our own GlobalSearch boasting cloud-based editions that have seen considerable adoption rates among users. There is a good reason for this shift, though. Moving solutions to the cloud has a slew of benefits that many may not yet be aware of, including:
Easy Maintenance and Compliance
Cloud solutions take server maintenance out of your hands, as updates, upgrades, backups, and other routine server work is taken care of by the service providers. The right cloud-based ECM solutions will also help you to be more compliant with a variety of regulations. A combination of internal controls, audits, and security technology like encryption allow well-designed ECM solutions to take care of compliance for you. Square 9’s GlobalSearch for example, is audited for SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, and HIPAA compliance. The solution also encrypts files while stored and in transit and comes with well-designed internal controls to give authorized personnel within your business only the information they need, keeping your data safe.
Increase Collaboration and Boost Business Continuity
Cloud-based ECM solutions give you access to your documents anywhere that there’s an internet connection. This allows for much better collaborations between departments and even offices as other employees can see the changes you are making in real-time. ECM solutions with a workflow component like GlobalSearch and GlobalAction can take this collaboration boost a step further by routing documents to the correct users and departments during each step of the process. All these capabilities transition seamlessly into remote working situations, like what could be expected during snowstorms, floods, or a pandemic similar to what Covid 19 caused. In addition to keeping employees connected, Cloud-based ECM solutions can also help keep business going during a disaster by ensuring your files are safe. Floods, fires, and storms are all capable of ruining on-site servers. Well-conceived cloud-hosted solutions, however, take advantage of multi-site, live backups and other precautions designed to keep customer data safe. That means you can rest assured that in the event of a disaster, you’ll still have all the information you need to do your job at your fingertips.
Further Reduce Costs
While having an ECM solution will likely save you money, cloud-based solutions can reduce costs even further. An average ECM cloud subscription can cost about $278 a month, so the 5-year cost would be $16,680. This is comparable to the initial cost of buying the software outright which may be around $10,000, before taking into account the slew of other costs that would be incurred. An on-premise server would require the one-time cost of setting up the server itself, which typically costs about $6,000. In addition to this one-time cost are the maintenance costs, which are typically about 20% of the initial software cost ($2,000 in our case), as well as the paid hours of the IT professional who maintains your servers. If this IT professional were to make $75,000 a year and spend 20% of his time working on this server you would be spending an additional $15,000 a year, bringing the 5-year cost to $95,000 before even factoring in security, cooling, and backups. That is a staggering difference of $78,320. The potential savings are incredible.
While maintenance, compliance, improved collaboration, business continuity, and savings are all incredible benefits associated with cloud solutions, there are plenty of other benefits to explore. Square 9 offers powerful, easy-to-learn cloud solutions from capture to archival that can overhaul your document-based activities. Contact us to learn more about how you can benefit from digital transformation in the cloud.
