Managing growth is time-consuming and can distract from your core activity of actually growing your business. Suddenly you’ve got more staff, perhaps a more complicated supply chain, larger premises – maybe even multiple locations – and many more customers. You need to control how and where your data is stored, enable your staff to communicate with each other and ensure that the critical aspects of your business are never interrupted. You need a small business solution that can scale to meet your future success, and that’s where the Microsoft Solutions and our partners can help.
How Microsoft can help
Given below are some solutions that could prepare your business for major growth. However, if you are unsure about what technology solution would best meet your business requirements you can get expert advice from Microsoft Specialist Partners. They are familiar with the challenges you are facing and can help you find the solutions that are best for you.
Get more done in your day
As a growing business, your success depends on getting as much as possible out of your working day. Whatever operating system your PCs are running now, an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro gives you an immediate boost to productivity. It starts up fast. It runs fast. It's designed to give your users access to information even before they open a single program. You’ll love its fast startup and snap multi-tasking.
Windows 8 Pro is also powered by a new generation of apps—both built-in and downloadable, cloud-ready apps. Live tiles give you instant access to everything you need for your business-- clients, suppliers, documents, and data, wherever they're located. And Windows 8 Pro still runs apps for previous editions of Windows that you're using.
A larger number of employees will also result in more PCs to manage and communicate between. Windows Intune™ uses a combination of Windows cloud services and upgrade licensing to manage, secure and organise your computers. You can group computers in any way that suits your needs (for example, by department or geographic location). A Windows Intune subscription also gives you the rights to upgrade to future versions of Windows.
Improve insights into your company’s financial and sales data
Timely and relevant insights are critical to an expanding business, so you can make decisions based on data rather than instinct. The new Office suite of applications offers you a comprehensive set of tools to pull together financial, sales, customer and other information in a way that lets you visualize the data easily so you can quickly analyse it and spot trends. Central reporting tools like dashboards and scorecards help present information from different systems in a simple, at-a-glance view, and can be shared with all stakeholders with a single click.
Enhanced business productivity for the modern business
With its modernized, clean, and fluid user interface, the new Office works great across all devices, whether you're using touch, mouse and keyboard, or pen. As documents and settings are saved to the cloud by default, you can pick up where you left off, or share and collaborate just by sending a link. Staying up to date with the latest developments is easy too - schedule meetings, send emails, start IM or voice and video chats, or host multiparty HD video conferences in a few clicks.
Get an IT Infrastructure that adapts to your changing business needs
Are you constantly under pressure to meet growing business demands? If your business is constrained by poor server and storage utilization, it's likely you're over-investing, rather than under-investing, in server hardware. Consider modernizing your IT and taking advantage of virtualization and the cloud to simplify management, lower energy consumption and improve security.
Enable better team collaboration at a small company cost
For many companies, getting the right IT system in place to serve a growing business – and paying for it – can be a bit daunting. You probably understand the business benefits of an on-premise server, but feel the investment would strain your cash-flow. Microsoft 365 is a no-hassle alternative. For a low-cost monthly subscription you can enable your teams to collaborate better no matter where they are or which device they are using. It’s an easy way to remove the hassle of managing your IT so you can concentrate on what matters most: your business strategy.
Acquire and manage new customers to sustain your business growth
A basic contact management system is perfect when you have a small and simple customer database but as your business grows, both in number of customers and in complexity, you may want to consider a more comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) system. A fully featured CRM system would give you a complete view of your sales pipeline by tracking and integrating forecasting, opportunity and financial data. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online lets you access customer information wherever you are, via your computer or mobile. It integrates with Outlook and looks the same as other Microsoft Office programs so it’s familiar to you and your staff, reducing the need for time-consuming training.
Still on Windows Server 2003?
Support for Windows Server 2003 ends in 2015. It’s time to upgrade. To maximize the life cycle of your next server, we strongly recommend you upgrade to Windows Server 2012.
