Today, companies have the power to take their enterprises to new heights. They do so by embracing digital transformation and the power of data. In fact, an IDC study forecasts that digital transformation will be a major component of two-thirds of the largest public businesses’ CEO’s corporate strategy by 2020.
It’s also already helping startups leverage a 34-per cent increase in revenue, according to research by IDG. But you can drive sound business decisions when you leverage the power of data with the help of cloud management platforms. Here’s how:
1. Accommodate Scalability
Every enterprise or startup has the goal to grow their business so that they increase their bottom-line profits. You can get this done by using data to support your business’ digital transformation.
It helps you to stay competitive and scale your business as demand grows. But without the right resources, scaling your business is difficult. Cloud management platforms (CMPs) provide a solution to this issue by accommodating scaling your business.
For example, you can use cloud management platforms such as Centilytics that leverage predictive analytics to determine the best time and resources to scale when database workloads are heavy. This helps you react to customer demands quickly.
When you’re able to react to customer demands based on data, you can help improve the customer experience and facilitate customer loyalty.
2. Monitor Activity
Profitability is helping to drive the digital transformation, and you have to understand the transactional activities that are taking away from your bottom line to maintain profitability.
At my software development company Arkenea, we use a cloud management platform to monitor activity and even forecast costs. So we can make data-driven decisions when implementing strategies to save money.
For instance, you can use a cloud management platform to track expenses by categories, such as by vendors or users. This helps you to narrow down cost drivers so you can create strategies to reduce these costs based on data.
You can also use CMPs to monitor the performance of your resources, such as your applications and networks, to ensure all your resources are utilized efficiently.
3. Provide Compliance Management
To stay in compliance with industry or company standards, it’s important to ensure your products are compliant. But compliance checks are often laborious when performed manually. However, you can leverage cloud management platforms to automate compliance checks, audits and risk assessments by using the power of data.
For example, you can use cloud management platforms to verify that HIPAA compliance requirements are being met for a health-based app that transmits user data to electronic health records (EHRs). This helps to save time so that employees do not have to check for compliance manually.
You can also use CMPs to also support compliance enforcement to minimize errors and stay in compliance. You can use cloud management platforms to quickly identify and manage user access, automate verification processes and security checks to ensure the right people have access to sensitive company data.
4. Facilitate Database as a Service (DaaS)
The time it takes to develop applications can hinder an enterprise from supporting its customers as demand increases. However, cloud management platforms can help resolve this issue and help support digital transformation by facilitating Database as a Service or DBaaS.
DBaaS helps you speed up the process of app development. For example, you can use a CMP to automate administrative tasks, such as backing up and updating code. You can also use CMPs to produce reports that identify user consumption behaviour of your applications. So you can determine ideal new features are they are likely to upgrade.
5. Provides Flexibility
Digital transformation doesn’t necessarily call for a “one-size-fits-all” approach. So, it’s important to incorporate platforms that provide the flexibility you need to leverage data to make better business decisions as your company grows or responds to changes in the environment.
When you use a cloud management platform, you get the benefit of being able to harness this flexibility. That’s because modern cloud management platforms can accommodate hybrid clouds that are part public and private. You can also use CMPs that can be used on-premise or within the cloud and customize it to meet your business needs.
6. Offer Opportunities for Supporting Big Data as a Service (BDaaS)
Being able to work with “clean” datasets is essential for making sound business decisions. However, data cleansing can be a time-consuming task that can easily take up your employees’ time.
In fact, research shows that 80 percent of a data scientist’s job involves data preparation and cleaning data. However, you can leverage cloud management platforms to save time with data cleansing and automation.
7. Improve Performance
Cloud management platforms also help support digital transformation by improving employee performance through process orientation. You can remove administrative tasks that are done manually. CMPs helps to digitize the process so that your employees are utilized more efficiently.
For example, you can use a cloud management platform to identify processes that may be hindering app development. This helps to automatically implement solutions based data insights. This helps improve the performance of the application and the productivity of your workforce.
Rahul Varshneya is the co-founder of Arkenea, a custom software development company that helps entrepreneurs and businesses build experience-rich mobile and
web apps. Rahul has been featured as a business technology thought leader in numerous media channels such as Bloomberg TV, Forbes, HuffPost, Inc, among others.