by Andrew O’Driscoll, CEO and Founder of Clear Task. See Andrew analyze the topic in this video.

Five Steps to Running Your Entire Business in the Cloud

I founded Clear Task 8 years ago to help companies move to the cloud, which at the time was in its infancy. Through our own experience of running our business completely in the cloud, combined with the experiences we’ve had with over 300 customers across over 800 projects, we’ve learned a lot about what it takes to successfully make the transition to the cloud.

Whether you’re already in business or just starting out, there are some key steps your company should follow to avoid potential pitfalls and ensure a smooth journey to running your business predominantly in the cloud. By sharing these learnings, I hope that other organizations will achieve the same benefits we’ve experienced, including increased productivity, increased ability to scale your business, and reduced costs. 

1:  Find a Compelling Event.

We made the conscious choice to run our business in the cloud from the beginning, so – as salesforce.com likes to say – “we were born cloud.”

For companies born prior to the cloud, it often takes a compelling event to move your business processes to the cloud.  The compelling event could be the expiration of licenses for an on-premise solution, an office move, geographic expansion, or something as dramatic as outright user revolt against current solutions. Whatever it might be, the compelling event should offer the opportunity for a ‘fresh start’ that rallies people around a common cause. 

2:  Choose an Anchor Tenant.

While in theory the cloud offers a vast choice of applications and platforms, we believe it’s critical to select an ‘anchor tenant’ –  a primary vendor that offers  majority of the applications you need, while also providing a robust platform for customization.  Salesforce is our anchor tenant. The technical benefits are significant, including the centralization of many business processes under one roof, resulting in a reduced need for application integration and system administration.  However, a much larger benefit for Clear Task has been the pace of new product innovation – most notably with Chatter, Work.com, and Site.com – which has really helped us run our business more efficiently.  

3:  Leverage Best of Breed Applications.

Our company has the best of both worlds, with a solid foundation provided by Salesforce and complemented by a selection of best of breed applications that fill-in the gaps. 

The AppExchange has been an invaluable source of applications that either are native Salesforce applications, or seamlessly integrate with Salesforce. There’s no doubt that the pace and ease of adding these applications contributes to the productivity, scale, and cost reduction benefits enjoyed by many Salesforce customers. 

Some examples of what we use include:

• Work.com, which is increasingly integrated with Salesforce and supports employee reviews and performance management
• DocuSign for Salesforce and Conga from AppExtremes for e-signature processing and document management respectively
• An application for tracking hours and invoicing clients, which is outside of Salesforce but fully integrated so we can take advantage of the robust reporting and workflow capabilities 

4:  Take It to the People: Find a Compelling Use Case.

Moving a poorly adopted on-premise application to the cloud probably is not a good predictor of success. Similar to our recommendation to find a compelling event for moving to the cloud, we recommend that you find a compelling user need.  Some questions you should ask include: What is in it for the users? Why will they use it? Do they need it? How will they use it? Where will they use it?

When we rolled out Work.com, we addressed a key need shared by all employees – the need for a place to provide feedback, give thanks, and build reputations. Employees have embraced it wholeheartedly. No carrot or stick was required.

The integration of our Professional Services Automation application with Salesforce for reporting and workflow fulfilled our employees’ desire to view reports and dashboards so they could understand where they were in relation to their goals and their peers, as well as be alerted to key milestones. 

Finding compelling use cases, that help and do not get in the way, will drive organic – not top-down – adoption.

Step 5:  Embrace a Culture of Innovation.

While it may take more effort to continually push new boundaries, we have found that the advantages far outweigh the cost and cannot be ignored. First mover advantages. Competitive advantages. Economic advantages.

But more than business results, we’ve found that continual innovation generates a new breed of employees that we call ‘cloud citizens’. These citizens are excited about innovation.  They like to play with what we call “the new toys”!  For us the excitement is palpable across the organization and translates into a more innovative culture – one where people not only love to embrace change, but demand it.

At Clear Task, this has resulted in a culture where our customers benefit from our enthusiasm for what the cloud can do for their business, backed by the real-world evidence of what it has done for our business.