The Punch of the Cloud

This article was updated in January 2021 to include the apps we are now using.

In the movie Creed, when the older Rocky Balboa is training the young Adonis Creed (Apollo Creed's son), he hands the young fighter a slip of paper with his training routine. The young Creed takes a picture of the paper with his smartphone and hands the paperback to Rocky. Rocky says "Don't you need the paper?" The young fighter says "No, I have it on my phone." Rocky says "Aren't you worried you might lose your phone?" The young Creed says "No, it's in the cloud." Rocky looks up into the sky and says "What cloud?"

Some may identify with this when they see younger industries embracing technology much quicker than the seasoned, well-established firms. This is especially true regarding embracing the cloud, in particular, software-as-a-service (SAAS). Entrepreneurs who desire to start professional service firms have the opportunity now to forego the purchase of the local server, and instead use SAAS for:

• Finances:  QuickBooks Online, FreshBooks, Xero
• Invoicing/Timekeeping: BigTime, BQE Core, Harvest
• File Storage: Microsoft OneDrive, DropBox, Box, Google Drive
• Backup Service: BackBlaze, Carbonite, CrashPlan
• Password Managers: 1Password, LastPass, Dashlane
• Project Management: Microsoft Planner, Asana, ClickUp, MeisterTask, Trello
• CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce, Cloze, Zoho, Salesflare, Nimble
• Website Builders: SquareSpace, Wix, WordPress

We starting using a new invoicing application this year, BigTime. Not only does BigTime have timesheet entry, and invoicing, it has a robust client database system, integrates well with QuickBooks Online, and has the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reporting we need to track our business performance.

Software suites such as Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) and Google Workspace (formerly GSuite and before that Google for Work) are beneficial for new firms since they offer email (Outlook and Gmail), storage (OneDrive and Google Drive), and collaboration tools (Word, Google Docs, Excel, Google Sheets).

The important decision for firms is to select an ecosystem and not attempt to straddle them (as we once did). Instead, as @Christoph Magnussen suggests in his excellent YouTube video comparison, choose the one that has the tools your firm needs the most and adapt to the rest of the ecosystem. For us, that was Microsoft 365 with Office built-in, the excellent file management system of SharePoint, and Teams, which continues to evolve and has changed how we do work in this new COVID 19 reality.

I have given here a few examples where SAAS tools have helped our firm. You may have other examples and I would love to hear how those may have helped your firm. And don’t forget Rocky’s advice: One step. One punch. One round at a time!