3 Hidden Drivers of Cloud Adoption for SMEs
The benefits of the cloud – improved agility, productivity and cost savings – are well-understood. But small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are adopting cloud services for other reasons, too. Here’s a quick look:
Improving customer service
At a time when social media can spread a customer’s grievances around the world, delivering excellent service has become more critical than ever. It’s just as important to give customer service teams the right tools to resolve customer issues 
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Cloud services, like customer relationship management (CRM) and live chat software, allow customer service teams to do their best work. With a cloud-based CRM service, for example, teams can access customer-related information (chat records, e-mail correspondence) to identify and resolve customer issues during service recovery.
Enhancing cybersecurity
When it comes to securing IT systems, SMEs with limited budgets and IT resources will never match the large companies behind cloud services. Nearly 50% of SME respondents to a Ponemon Institute study described their organization's IT posture as ineffective .
Most cloud vendors implement robust cybersecurity measures (including secure data centers, and data and network redundancy) to guard against unexpected downtime and cyber-breaches.
Overcoming shadow IT
Whether SME owners like it or not, employees are likely to use consumer cloud services for unofficial purposes. This leads to shadow IT, or the use of IT resources without an organization’s approval.
Left unmanaged, shadow IT can increase security threats and jeopardize an organization’s business-critical information. Cloud solutions offer IT administrators a clearer overview of an organization’s software inventory and data flows, giving them increased ability to overcome shadow IT, mitigate potential security risks, and over time, extract 1.7 times greater ROI than comparable on-premise solutions.
