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www.wbjournal.com August 15, 2016 • Worcester Business Journal 17 T he cloud! What is it? Where is it? How does it work? Can I access it? Can I use it? These are some of the questions I get every time I talk about the cloud. Although it can be confusing, the reality is the cloud in its most general form is easy to understand. How it affects you and your business is where things become interesting, exciting and confusing. Let me try to clear the fog around the cloud and give you some general concepts that should make the cloud as clear as a sunny day. Where is the cloud? The easier question is: Where isn't the cloud? The cloud is not at your location. It is connected to the internet and located someplace else. In fact, any computer server that is not located on your premises is considered in the cloud. All you need is power and an internet connection, and you can access most portions of the cloud from anywhere. In addition to public clouds, where large server banks or giants like Google or Amazon exist, private clouds (as they relate to information-technology) are available to companies that purchase space in a data center, and then install servers with large storage capacity that allow access to this platform. Usually these data centers offer services including data backup, virtual machines and collocated servers, financial software, insurance software and the like. Cloud services are becoming more and more popular for small business, but this comes as a two-edged sword. While it is great to have access to the latest versions of enterprise-style software like financial, planning or customer retention software for a nominal monthly fee, the downside is the monthly fee gets expensive over time. Businesses used to buy software and upgrade it only when absolutely necessary. Now, with the subscription model, businesses will pay far more over time than if the software was purchased outright. This is worth reviewing and determining if access to the latest software is worth the cumulative cost for your business. Although there are some companies that choose to operate completely within a cloud platform, for most small and mid-size businesses, a hybrid approach works best. In this scenario, your business is not entirely in the cloud and not entirely on premise, but rather some services stem from the cloud and some come from on-premise servers at your location. This is particularly true if your business uses older and/or legacy software, which does not perform as well on a cloud platform. In these cases, a hybrid approach will allow the legacy software to run on premise but still be accessed by the cloud platform. One of the biggest worries and problems with the cloud is a lack of access. While it's true that if you have no internet connection (due to a problem with your internet service provider or loss of power, for example) you can't access the cloud, you can always go to another location (home or a secondary office), login to the cloud service you rely on, and quickly regain access. By customizing cloud solutions with the services your business needs, you can ensure more sunny days ahead for your business! n Konrad Martin is co-founder and principal of Tech Advisors (www.tech- adv.com), a leading technology solution provider for small to mid-size businesses in Medfield. He can be reached at konradm@tech-adv.com or 508-505-4696. 10 Things I Know About... Using the cloud for small business KNOW HOW 10) You can't underestimate the importance of culture. People stay or go because of the strength of the connection they feel to your company. Culture is at the center of that. 9) Core values lay the cultural foundation. A company's core values play a real role in how people behave, and they should be defined clearly and emphasized regularly. 8) The cultural tone is set from the top. When management treats people and the company's core values with respect, it helps everyone feel aligned. 7) Creating non-negotiables creates a clear path. Your cultural touchstones need to be part of the screening process. If you hire someone and they don't live up to your values or respect the culture, you need to make a change. 6) Culture works best when it's a tangible part of your employees' lives. Think about ways to bring core values to life. At AAFCPAs, for example, we give every employee a community service day off. It's an opportunity for us to demonstrate how much we value their pursuits and our role as a team in the community. 5) Being consistent and transparent breeds trust in the culture. Don't be shy about sharing key drivers of growth and what success looks like. People have to know where they fit in and where the opportunities are in order to grow personally and professionally. 4) People feel invested in the culture when their development is valued. Focusing on training and education – especially for skills that may be tangential to the day-to-day job – makes people feel valued. We give every team member 100 hours of training over two years, and we recognize the need to balance out the emphasis on accounting skills with soft skills like communications, public speaking and building professional networks. 3) Great cultural strategies adapt with the times. Create a strategy that supports what you want to be and how you want to evolve. Then constantly monitor it to see how the workforce responds and whether the strategy needs to change. 2) Measurement tells the real story. Measure the strength of your culture by conducting regular employee surveys. 1) Culture needs to be authentic. Most important: If it's fake, it will break. Every time. H aving your time hijacked by other people can derail the work you had planned for the day. When you are in a management role, the effects can be even more significant, and the distractions and interruptions more numerous. Effective time management is also crucial to thoughtful decision-making. Here are three ways to ensure you keep your planned work on track, sidestepping pitfalls that you deem non-essential (at least for the moment): Bundle pick-your-brain requests together. Of course you want to help someone coming up through the ranks in the industry or new graduates, and you may get a lot of these requests. An article by Laura McMullen of Money. USNews.com suggests bundling these requests together. Maybe once a month you dedicate an hour: four 15-minute phone calls or two 30-minute coffee meetings. The article also suggests referring requests to more suitable colleagues when possible, or making a FAQ list you can send to those who may have the same questions as others. A v o i d i n t e r r u p t i o n s TimeManagementNinja.com blog author Craig Jarrow advises a quick greeting, then, "How can I help you?" when answering the phone, to get right to the matter at hand. Don't answer the phone if you're busy. "When people come to your office or cubicle, get up and meet them. In other words, do not allow them to get comfortable. They may assume you were headed somewhere. Either way, they will be more likely to get to their issue immediately," he writes. Batch meetings together and block off time to do real work, says Mike Torres of Refocuser.com, time that is set aside for projects and tasks. "You need dedicated, continuous time. Time to get ramped up, into a zone and time to finish. Creative work is hard and isn't usually done in 10-minute intervals," he writes. n 101: GUARD YOUR TIME >> BY SUSAN SHALHOUB Special to the Worcester Business Journal Company culture BY KONRAD MARTIN Special to the Worcester Business Journal By Carla McCall Carla McCall is co-managing partner at Westborough accounting firm AAFCPAs and chairwoman of the Massachusetts Society of CPAs. You can reach her at cmccall@aafcpa.com.