The COVID-19 outbreak has seen many companies being forced to embrace remote working like never before in a bid to delay the spread of the virus. Remote working will be entirely new for some companies, while others will be well experienced in working from home on various occasions.In fact, over 40% of US jobs are compatible with working from home, but only 7% make it available to most or all of their employees according to Global Workplace Analytics. But the desire to work from home is there. Arecent surveyby LinkedIn found that82%of workers want to work from home at least one day per week, and 57% want to work from home at least three days per week.Although companies may not currently have a working from home policy or even the rebate management technology in place to adapt to remote working straight away, they can now take the appropriate measures to change this. One of these measures is adopting cloud-based software which will provide your employees responsible for managing rebates with the ability to work from any location that has internet access, giving them access to the same information that they’d have access to from the office.

Cloud-based software frees up your time

With cloud-based software, you no longer have to worry about complex IT upgrades or archaic software license technology. All of that is taken care of for you in your monthly / yearly subscription service, so you can focus your business efforts elsewhere. Not only does this save you hassle, but it also means you don’t have to worry about hackers exploiting your out of date software. 

Increased security

Although security is often seen as the biggest concern with moving to the cloud, Salesforce, has found that 94% of businesses claimed they saw an increase in security. The in-built security features offered by cloud providers, such as multi-factor authentication and encrypted connections, often represents better security solutions than many businesses could provide themselves.For example, here at Enable we use Microsoft Azure to host our software, because it’s not only a secure, modern hosting platform but also has lots of powerful features including the automatic provisioning of additional processing power during periods of high demand, meaning your software experience is never slowed down. We also give your employees specific credentials to our rebate management platform so you can maintain security at the same time as giving them flexibility to work remotely. We can even integrate with your Enterprise-level SSO, for ultimate control.

Reduced disaster recovery

Running cloud-based software means that not only is your software hosted on the cloud, but so is your data. This reduces the need for disaster recovery. If something were to happen to a device you use, or worse yet your office servers, your data would still be stored safely, and your cloud service providers would know how to recover lost information, if needed.

Offers scalability for when your business grows

Implementing cloud-based software also enables a large increase in remote working very quickly, since employees can use their own mobile devices and laptops without incurring additional hardware costs. They can also access any information via the cloud wherever they choose to work, and on any device. As long as each employee is provided with access details, new employees can easily be granted access to all of the information that they will need, without them ever having to visit the office at all. This is ideal when there is restricted physical office space to scale up, and there is no restriction on the number of remote workers.

More cost efficient

Most cloud-based software is paid for on a subscription basis. For example, our rebate management software offers different levels of subscription based on your usage requirements, so you’re only paying for what you need, and when your needs change, your software is able to easily scale up or down with you. Cloud-based software is also much faster and easier to deploy initially, so there are fewer start-up costs. Whereas in comparison traditional desktop software costs companies a lot in terms of finance including licensing fees for multiple users.

Enhances closer collaboration

One of the misconceptions of implementing cloud-based software is that it reduces the collaborative experience of employees. That is, on the one hand, the opposite of what it can do when utilised to its potential. Because cloud-based software can be accessed via the internet, this means employees can still communicate, share, and collaborate on ideas 24/7 even though they are not physically together. They can also have total control over several projects and can receive real-time updates too, for example with Enable’s collaborative portal they get alerted when a trading agreement has been signed off.

The future of cloud-based software

Working from home can come with many benefits and it can be made just one step closer with cloud-based software. According to a study by the International Data Group, 69% of businesses are already using cloud technology in one capacity or another, and 18% say they plan to implement cloud-computing solutions at some point. The worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow 17% in 2020 to total $266.4 billion, up from $227.8 billion in 2019, according to Gartner, Inc.

Main benefits of adopting cloud-based rebate management software:

• Enhance collaboration among team members in real time
• Reduced IT costs
• Having easy access to your company's rebate data will save time and money
• Less human errors
• Everyone can access the same information
• Data loss prevention
• Automatic software updates
• Competitive edge
• As you grow, the software grows with you

If you’re thinking of moving your rebate management to the cloud this year, why not sign up to our free trial?