Richard Conway is the owner and managing director of Pure SEO, an Auckland-based company that provides search engine optimisation, AdWords and social media marketing services to national and international companies.
What are some of the different cloud-based technologies you use at Pure SEO?
Our business relies on cloud-based systems to function on a daily basis. Currently we use Xero for our accounting. It's intuitive and makes it easy to reconcile; it just made knowing where we were financially as a business much easier.
We are using Workflow Max for our workflow management, but are upgrading this to Pro Workflow, which is more intuitive and has better features for our business. We do not have a server and rely on Dropbox for Business, which is great because it allows us to seamlessly sync changed files, backup off-site and 'roll back' if someone has deleted something by mistake. We recently moved our email to Exchange Server on Office 365, which resolved a problem with diaries and emails not syncing between devices.
We are also in the process of developing our own cloud reporting system. This will enable our clients to log in and get dashboards and so on in relation to their performance. We have not found any existing systems that offer what we require so decided to develop our own.
What impact have these technologies had on your business?
The impact has been huge in so many ways. There have been cost savings from not spending $25,000 on physical servers; Dropbox costs us less than $2,000 a year. We've reduced costs in accounting and bookkeeping fees by moving to Xero, and received the added benefit of knowing exactly where the business is at at a click of a button.
We are moving to ProWorkflow from Workflow Max as we prefer the user interface and functionality. We have gone through rapid growth in the last five years, from being a sole trader to a team of 20. Initially I was able to manage all the workflow in my head, but as we grew this became an impossibility, so a workflow system became an absolute requirement.
Has embracing the cloud presented any challenges?
Implementing the workflow system was a real challenge for us - so much so that we paid for an external consultant to set it up properly. However, on the whole, implementing the cloud technologies has been both cost- and time-efficient. There are set-up and training costs, but these have proved lower than the alternatives.
What advice would you have for other small business owners looking at using cloud-based technologies?
Just do it. We used a professional IT firm called Base 10 to help us and they made the whole thing easy.