The Cloud is fast becoming a popular place for businesses to operate, and collaboration on the Cloud is what Forbes Insights suggest ‘enables enterprises to carry out business activities much faster than would normally be possible’*.  Collaborating in the Cloud offers far more freedom and flexibility than doing it on internal servers, and collaboration itself offers so many benefits, such as the five listed below.

Employee participation

There are many ways to boost employee participation in collaborative tools (as mentioned in this blog post), however simply through using collaborative tools in the cloud you can already increase employee participation, by keeping projects in one location and allowing employees access, they are instantly able to collaborate more. Employees can help each other, offer opinions, give updates on projects and timescales.

Competition

Companies who do not embrace collaboration and Cloud computing risk losing to more forward thinking competitors. As more and more SME’s join the Cloud and implement collaborative tools, those who don’t, are in danger of getting left behind, as it is becoming an essential to many businesses.

Efficiency

Most SME’s don’t have servers with the capacity to send huge documents. However the Cloud offers endless (at a small cost) space and therefore the potential for more collaboration and in turn improved business processes. It also removes the tiresome and incessant emailing between employees and clients and offers one platform in which to exchange ideas. .

Scalability

Cloud computing offers the benefit of scalability: because users only need to utilize however much of the available resources which they want. Therefore you can have and use as much or as little space and IT infrastructure as you need with the potential to upscale as and when your SME requires it.

Ease of access to content

By collaborating in the Cloud, businesses can create a dynamic work environment in which employees do not have to be connected to a network or intranet to access files. Yet, there are other advantages such as real time notifications and collaborating together all while different versions are automatically saved and retrievable. As the Cloud can be accessed remotely and from virtually any device, collaboration has never been easier.