More and more companies are going virtual, which allows employees to telecommute, work from the road, and be based anywhere on the planet. This approach saves money in office costs, improves productivity and morale, and allows the company to benefit from accessing talent in low-cost countries.
But how can a company provide technology to these far-flung employees?
These days, the answer is to use cloud services.
It all started with Merrill Lynch piloting Salesforce.com, a cloud-based customer relationship management service, for 5,000 of its geographically dispersed financial advisers in 2005. The project was successful enough for Merrill Lynch to expand it to 25,000 advisers a year later -- and the ball started rolling.
But smaller companies had already been experimenting with cloud services. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), for example, offers its Google Apps platform for businesses, which replaces Google branding with the company's own logo. It includes email, online word processing, online presentations, and group calendars. The Google Apps online spreadsheet product allows multiple employees to work on a spreadsheet simultaneously.
Google Apps has recently expanded to include graphics editing and document sharing. Another recent addition to the Google Apps family is Google Chat, which is built into the email service and lets you see which colleagues are online, send them instant messages, and even do video calls, all without leaving your inbox.
Another popular service -- especially with small businesses -- is Skype's business telephone service. Create accounts for your employees, track their calls, and add money to their accounts from a centralized management panel. Calls to other Skype users are free, and calls to traditional telephones are billed at extremely low rates. Since Skype has servers in so many countries, international calls are, in effect, all local calls.
My company used both of these services when we were based in Hong Kong and had people in Shanghai, Mumbai, the US, and Europe.
To manage company workflows and keep our books, we used online database management. Now, we are having to pick a new platform -- our old provider was bought by Twitter and shut down -- so we're evaluating the Zoho suite of online services, which includes a relational database, a CRM product, and, now, even a bookkeeping product. Other Web-based tools from Zoho include word processing and spreadsheets, calendars, a help desk product, and project management.
We're also trying out Salesforce. Its contact manager starts at just $5 a month, and its Force.com relational database product is free for up to 100 users and comes with a gigabyte of storage.
Cloud-based enterprise-focused applications allow employees to collaborate on projects while providing oversight to their managers. Even if you are the most obsessive-compulsive micromanager, there are cloud services that will let you lean over your employees' shoulders and watch them work -- even from the other side of the planet.
Cloud Services Sustain Virtual Companies
More and more companies are going virtual, which allows employees to telecommute, work from the road, and be based anywhere on the planet. This approach saves money in office costs, improves productivity and morale, and allows the company to benefit from accessing talent in low-cost countries.
But how can a company provide technology to these far-flung employees?
These days, the answer is to use cloud services.
It all started with Merrill Lynch piloting Salesforce.com, a cloud-based customer relationship management service, for 5,000 of its geographically dispersed financial advisers in 2005. The project was successful enough for Merrill Lynch to expand it to 25,000 advisers a year later -- and the ball started rolling.
But smaller companies had already been experimenting with cloud services. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), for example, offers its Google Apps platform for businesses, which replaces Google branding with the company's own logo. It includes email, online word processing, online presentations, and group calendars. The Google Apps online spreadsheet product allows multiple employees to work on a spreadsheet simultaneously.
Google Apps has recently expanded to include graphics editing and document sharing. Another recent addition to the Google Apps family is Google Chat, which is built into the email service and lets you see which colleagues are online, send them instant messages, and even do video calls, all without leaving your inbox.
Another popular service -- especially with small businesses -- is Skype's business telephone service. Create accounts for your employees, track their calls, and add money to their accounts from a centralized management panel. Calls to other Skype users are free, and calls to traditional telephones are billed at extremely low rates. Since Skype has servers in so many countries, international calls are, in effect, all local calls.
My company used both of these services when we were based in Hong Kong and had people in Shanghai, Mumbai, the US, and Europe.
To manage company workflows and keep our books, we used online database management. Now, we are having to pick a new platform -- our old provider was bought by Twitter and shut down -- so we're evaluating the Zoho suite of online services, which includes a relational database, a CRM product, and, now, even a bookkeeping product. Other Web-based tools from Zoho include word processing and spreadsheets, calendars, a help desk product, and project management.
We're also trying out Salesforce. Its contact manager starts at just $5 a month, and its Force.com relational database product is free for up to 100 users and comes with a gigabyte of storage.
Cloud-based enterprise-focused applications allow employees to collaborate on projects while providing oversight to their managers. Even if you are the most obsessive-compulsive micromanager, there are cloud services that will let you lean over your employees' shoulders and watch them work -- even from the other side of the planet.
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