As a professional organizer, you probably aren’t spending a lot of time in the office, at least not during standard business hours. But you still need to be accessible to your clients as well as your business operations. And that means using more mobile business tools that let you take your office with you, wherever you go.

Hey! You! Get on that Cloud!

With apologies to Mick and Keith, if you aren’t there, you really need to get on that cloud. This will free up space used by downloaded (native) apps on your device and more importantly, let you get your data from anywhere, even if your phone or tablet battery runs out or the device breaks.

Cloud technologies keep data in offsite storage away from your office. You access your data through the Internet—quite literally, through the clouds. Data is actually stored at earthly data centers that generally run hundreds of servers so owners get instant access to their data. Services use different power suppliers in case one conks out to safeguard against total blackout.

Most social media networks use the cloud. So do all those banks that allow online banking. When you use these services through a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet, you use apps designed for their operating systems.

What Cloud Apps Will Help My Business?

The cost for mobile cloud services has dropped in recent years even as the technologies become stronger. Providers like Google Apps offer a nice suite of mobile business tools that also include email, documents and spreadsheets, and scheduling. Many offer more tablet functions but are accessible to smartphones, where if you aren’t the best tiny keyboard typist, at least you can download and look at documents and other data when needed.

As a small business owner or sole proprietor, you probably are thinking first and foremost about securing your financial information, including payment data. You aren’t alone. A recent study by Adobe Digital Index found that financial apps are the most popular ones on the market. There are mobile apps that let you accept credit or debit card payment through your mobile device. Intuit merchant payment services offers one that can be bundled into its popular QuickBooks product, with two service options:

• pay-as-you-go: 2.75 percent swipe rate and 3.75 percent keyed rate
• 1.75 percent swipe rate and 2.75 percent keyed rate, for $12.95/month

There are no monthly fees for either package. Swiping involves using Intuit’s free GoPayment card reader. Keying refers to processing a transaction online using your keyboard.

Is the Cloud Safe?

The cloud is probably the safest storage option you can get, and a lot safer than backing up your data on a hard drive that’s stored next to your computer. Furthermore, cloud data businesses invest far more heavily in security than the average business and have a far more vested interest to do so because security is their business. Any well-publicized outages are less common than server crashes and power failures that plague most businesses on a semi-regular basis.

In a 2013 study by Microsoft of small and midsize businesses, ones that adopted cloud services cited these benefits:

• 94 percent gained security benefits they did not get from on-premises technology including updated systems and programs, antivirus protection and antispam management
• 75 percent saw improvements in service availability
• 62 percent said they had better privacy protection

It’s up to you to decide what’s best for you and your business, but with more and more services becoming cloud-based, it probably won’t be long until it’s no longer a question of whether you’ll do business in the cloud, but which apps you will use.

Which cloud apps do you use? Would you mind telling us about your experiences, good or bad?

Photo © Slavoljub Pantelic / Depositphotos.com