The cloud has created a paradigm shift that’s every bit as important as the industrial revolution for businesses and consumers, says Gary Turner, managing director, Xero UK. For firms that haven’t already made the most of it, the opportunity to re-imagine services and create innovate new ways to add real value for clients is beckoning.
The year 2014 has heralded a real turning point in the maturity of digital. Almost three billion people – 40% of the world’s population – are using the Internet according to the latest figures from the United Nations. Facebook has 1.35 billion active monthly users, which is incredible when you consider the site has only been around for ten years.
Where can digital take you?
With the web becoming a way of life around the world, commercially the cloud as a mechanism is no longer the primary focus. Rather, what’s important is the benefit that digital can bring. In this respect, it’s not about the engine, it’s about all the new places that engine can take you.
The emergence of cloud-hosted digital innovation is a shift that’s every bit as important as the industrial revolution two centuries ago – it’s honestly that mould-breaking. History shows that the invention of steam power radically rewrote the entire fabric of production, economics and employment. In the longer term, it even ended up rewriting the fabric of Western society itself.
With the introduction of the steam locomotive, people were no longer held back by the restrictions and limited scope of horse-drawn transport. Towns and cities that were once distant and out of reach were now accessible to all. That meant new ways to trade, transport goods and a geographical and social mobility that had been unheard of until that moment in history.
So how does this link to the modern day – and what are the implications of cloud society-wide?
The additional benefits of the cloud
What was important about industrialisation wasn’t that it was a steam engine rather than a horse supplying the transportation. What made a steam engine better than a horse were the extra, brand-new benefits that a steam train offered.
They ran on tracks on a growing rail infrastructure. They were quicker, more powerful and had far more capacity than a horse and carriage. And they created new opportunities that simply couldn’t have existed without the invention of steam power. This new-found power was only important because it brought these additional benefits and changed the existing status quo.
At this crucial point in the 21st century, the digital revolution is not about apps and software being hosted in the cloud. That’s the mechanism, but it’s not the revolutionary aspect. What creates this new shift in models is the additional benefit that the cloud engine offers. You can be quicker, more powerful, have more capacity and be more efficient – in exactly the same way that steam did. And, here’s the revolutionary part: cloud creates benefits and opportunities that simply weren’t possible before now. And in doing so, it changes everything.
For example, if you think you’re ‘doing cloud accounting’ by sharing some Excel spreadsheets with your accountant via Dropbox then you’re really missing the point. You’ve not completed a shift in your methodology. All you’ve done is swapped the engine that drives the process. You’ve created your own steam-powered horse carriage. And you can imagine how much use that would be.
Revolutionising how you do business
Thinking of cloud as the ability to use browser-based software, but then not changing your processes, products and service offerings is short-sighted to say the least. You recognise the role that tech has to play in supporting your customers but application of tech isn’t enough. You need to consider carefully how your business processes can change to better support your customers. And that means revisiting your entire business strategy.
What’s needed is the ability to step outside your business and think about the new opportunities that are available to you as a cloud-enabled business. For a start, you can be completely mobile and work from anywhere. That ability in itself raises many new ways of working with your customers, flexing your work/life balance and creating teams of people who aren’t tied to one specific location.
As an example, there’s nothing to stop you working with a customer who’s based in Scotland, even if you’re based in London. And the team that services that client don’t have to be in Scotland either. Or in London. You’ll all have access to the same data and you can all access critical software applications on a mobile device anywhere in the world. And that means the barriers and restrictions of geography are completely removed. How this happens (i.e. through the cloud) is almost irrelevant. What’s important is that this way of working brings with it completely new capabilities.
Now’s the time to innovate
The new capabilities you have – plus the benefits they can bring for your clients – are limited only by your strategic imagination, your ability to innovate and your capability to fund new growth and resources.
So, let’s start really being innovative and make more of the vast potential the cloud offers up. Let’s throw away the old rule book and start writing the next chapter in the digital revolution. And let’s see what brand new ideas we can come up with that really revolutionise the services on offer to clients. The world is your oyster.
For further information, visit www.xero.com. You can get more information on the benefits of cloud accounting with our Xero Small Business Guides.
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Xero, sponsor of the business essentials hub.
