Why You Should Run Your Business Online 4:
Workplace Flexibility

This is the fourth post of the “Why You Should Run Your Business Online” series. If you have not yet read the previous posts, head back to the beginning to catch up.

People are creatures of habit.

For thousands of years, getting your work done meant going to a certain place; whether it was a farm, factory or office.

Today, we are more mobile than ever before.  We travel to meet our customers, whether it’s across town or across the world.  We work from home offices and we struggle to balance our time between our work and personal lives.

Along the way, where we get our work done has become less important than actually getting our work done. Here’s where the cloud and SAAS come into play by helping you make the most of your time.

Value Component 3: Workplace Flexibility

When you use the cloud and SAAS, you can literally run your business from anywhere as long as you have a computer that can connect to the Web.

People have more and more to do in their day, both business and personal, and anything that allows you to get more done is worth its weight in gold.

Being able to access your software and data from anywhere is an invaluable capability. You can make much more efficient use of your time and fit in all the things you need to for your work life and want to for your personal life.

Ride Sally, Ride

Workplace flexibility certainly helps our friend Sally with the PR firm.

Sally leaves her office early to go watch her daughter’s softball game.  She leaves extra early, even though she has work left to do for tomorrow, because she needs to beat traffic to be on time.

Because she beat the traffic, Sally gets to the ball park with plenty of time to spare.  Sitting in her car, she works on her laptop, connected to the Web with a broadband cellular card.  She sends out four invoices, re-edits two press releases which she then submits for review and answers a client question in their shared work space.

Sally works until she hears a knock on the driver’s side window.  Her daughter is standing there smiling.

Work complete, she closes up her laptop, comes out of the car, gives her daughter a hug and goes to watch the game.

Running your business in the cloud makes you mobile and frees you in ways you never thought possible.

Imagine

Imagine paying your company’s bills while sitting in an airport waiting for a plane.

Or, if you need a change of scenery, you can head to the local coffee shop for a cuppa’ joe and STILL get work done while you enjoy the hustle and bustle of the crowds passing by.

Imagine staying home with your sick child and not missing a full day of work.

Inside my laptop is a communications card that is essentially a cellular phone.  For under $60 a month, I can access the Web at high speed from any spot in the world where I can get a cellular phone signal.  I can work at home, at a client’s office or in the middle of a field under a tree (and have)!

Last year, I purchased a new device, a “mobile hotspot”.  It does the same thing as my communications card except it allows up to five computers to connect to the Web.  This has been very handy during meetings!

If I leave my laptop behind, I can use any computer to connect to the Web and get my work done.  I have done this at client’s offices, Internet cafes and even at the homes of my friends and family.

The cloud is where I get my work done.

Join me next time for the 4th value component and more examples of the advantages of running your business online.