Cloud Networks Are Necessary For Law Firm Efficiency & Cost Management
Cloud platforms have shifted from a nice asset to have to an absolutely essential player in business operations. Organizations can no longer afford to think of the cloud as a future investment – it’s making waves now and will shape the future of how we work.
Company leaders are increasingly recognizing the value that cloud can bring. Nearly a third are working with four or more vendors to have options necessary to support different applications and workloads. Organizations must seek out the best solutions to alleviate their pain points and maintain compliance.
The cloud’s benefits have been proven time and again. Continual innovation, speed boosts, application resiliency and better cost management are major values. To learn more about why now is the best time for law firms to migrate to the cloud, contact Afinety today.
Technology has brought a number of opportunities to operate more efficiently, maximize benefits and better serve customers. It’s affected all aspects of our culture, including consumer expectations, forcing organizations to keep up with these developments. Today, legal consumers anticipate the same type of accessibility and capabilities from their attorneys as they do from other service providers. Law firms must ensure that they have the infrastructure in place to meet the needs of their modern clients.
Following Through With Changes For Efficiency
Organization leaders are increasingly recognizing the potential that technology can bring to their operations, with the cloud in particular being a major disrupter. The benefits these platforms bring can significantly increase efficiencies in the delivery of legal services, but law firms must be ready to follow through to achieve these goals. A study by Altman Weil found that while 94 percent of respondents were focusing on improving efficiency, only 49 percent have changed the way they approach legal service delivery. Above The Law contributor Nicole Black posited that this trend could indicate the difficulties of changing long-held processes despite the overwhelming evidence that these shifts are necessary.
While adjustments are certainly challenging, using the cloud can boost your business to the next level. Migrating your network to the cloud is a significant way to innovate legal service delivery and improve your efficiency. Following through with your commitment to change by implementing training for your users will bring new ways of serving client needs and performing up to emerging expectations.
“Digitization will help the legal sector work better and more flexibly for everyone.”
Improving Sharing And Collaboration Opportunities
Law firm clients don’t communicate in the same ways they did a decade ago. They’re mobile and look to have easy accessibility for advice and services. Confidence in the cloud is steadily increasing across the consumer and enterprise sectors, making it a critical asset for bridging the gap between both parties. CBR Online contributor Doug Hargrove noted that legal practices can significantly reduce the amount of paperwork in the office and courtroom simply by moving assets to the cloud. This in turn drives workforce flexibility and collaboration by providing a single portal to access business information and find necessary documents.
Modern clients expect their lawyers to have the appropriate case files on hand at all times and to address their particular problems. The cloud ensures that attorneys have an easily searchable database to deal with issues quickly and deliver effective solutions. Digitization of the legal sector will help it work better and more flexibly for everyone. Law firms can also use the cloud to collaborate on a case or reach out to a specialist to get the best answers faster.
Ensuring Compliance And Confidentiality
Cloud platforms are now becoming more secure than in-house options, making platforms like AWS a major value for supporting and protecting critical business information. A 2017 survey from KPMG found that legal and financial service firms no longer have compliance challenges that were once associated with cloud-based services, Legal Futures reported. Fears associated with security and privacy are steadily being abated by continual vendor protection improvements. If law firms hope to meet modern client needs, the cloud should be the first technology adopted to advance their capabilities.
“Security, connectivity, mobility and scalability will all be fundamental to ensure the required level of performance and resilience is in place to enable such modernization,” Legal Futures stated. “High maintenance, complex legacy systems will be a significant barrier, which is why moving to a cloud-based infrastructure is no longer a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’.”
Change can be difficult, but it’s necessary to meet evolving client needs and keep up with the competition. To learn more about how the cloud can help you meet modern law firm client expectations, contact Afinety today.
How Law Practices Can Manage Today’s Cloud Challenges
Challenges associated with the cloud today are not the same as what they were a decade ago. Security has advanced to the point where it’s better than the majority of in-house capabilities. Other challenges have dissipated as organizations have gained more experience working with the technology.
While businesses are starting to realize cloud benefits, four out of five companies aren’t getting the most out of their cloud investments, according to a Fugue survey. Organizations must pivot their focus to combating modern cloud challenges and using it effectively.
Many cloud challenges now revolve around inadequate planning, processes and people. To make sure the cloud brings value, create a comprehensive plan and implement the right procedures for agile operation. To find out more about overcoming modern cloud challenges, stay tuned with Afinety.
Law Practices Manage Cloud Costs Based On Its Requirements
Your cloud environment might only be priced for your current needs. As your requirements shift, provisioning and services might become more expensive than you expected. However, there are a few steps you can take to manage your cloud costs.
The biggest step you can take is to choose a vendor with a pay-as-you-go pricing model. This means that you’ll only pay for what you use, but it will require a higher degree of vigilance to control your expenses. Watching your asset use and ROI will help avoid sticker shock and implement only the best solutions.
Align yourself with a vendor that understands your unique pain points. At Afinety, we help design cloud environments for law firms that will save costs and yield other benefits. For more information on managing cloud costs, contact Afinety today.
Things To Consider To Implement The Appropriate Cloud Network
Investing in the cloud and configuring it to your particular needs takes a lot of planning. The wrong service could prevent you from getting the benefits that you expect. There are a few considerations you should make for your cloud environment.
First of all, you need to ensure that your critical applications will migrate easily. Identifying any dependencies within these systems will prevent unplanned outages and preserve the functionality of your assets.
You must also verify that your cloud environment is secure. Team up with a vendor that understands your pain points and has a track record of serving other organizations within your industry. Choosing the right provider will ensure protection in the cloud as well as compliance. Stay tuned with Afinety to learn more about why your law firm should choose the cloud.
The cloud has invariably disrupted a variety of industries and processes to become one of the most important tools for modern business users. Initial concerns and challenges held back a number of companies from adopting this technology, but this is no longer the case. More organizations are moving critical workloads to the cloud for a number of reasons:
1. Better Security
Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services have focused a lot of time and investment in improving the security capabilities to suit enterprise use. In many cases, the protection measures are above what typical in-house teams might be able to support. Two-factor authentication and encryption are the biggest cloud safeguards, ensuring that no unauthorized parties can view sensitive information at rest or in transit.
The cloud has become significantly more secure.
Even heavily regulated sectors like health care and financial institutes are starting to become more open to cloud adoption. Ed McCallister, CIO at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told TechTarget that cloud vendors are following the same security standards that medical institutions would adhere to in their own data centers. The investments that cloud providers have made, along with stringent service-level agreements are putting health care IT professionals at ease and allowing them to focus more on other tasks.
“Cloud platforms have become significantly easier to manage.”
2. Increased Familiarity
When the cloud became a buzzword in everyone’s minds, some organizations were hesitant to adopt it due to the lack of experience and skills necessary to manage it. As a result, many businesses start out with smaller projects and work their way up. Over the years, cloud platforms have become significantly easier to manage, especially with the help of an experienced IT provider. Plus, professionals have some experience with cloud-based services and products.
As organizations become more comfortable with the cloud, they are starting to move their entire networks. AWS head of enterprise strategy Stephen Orban told Computerworld that while it’s typically tougher to move big legacy workloads, IT departments are no longer going into these efforts blind, and that will make a huge difference. Increased familiarity with the cloud is helping to build muscle memory and enabling IT staff to make faster, better decisions related to migration strategies.
3. Significant Benefits
Now that security and experience concerns have largely been addressed, organizations including law firms, are starting to realize the true benefits that the cloud can bring. The ability to securely access critical business resources at any time, anywhere from any device opens significant opportunities. According to Trackvia, 59 percent of companies using the cloud expect to see productivity benefits. Organizations believe that cloud platforms will enable them to be more productive and flexible within their processes, and so far, much of the research shows that the technology does bring these advantages as well as many others.
The cloud affords better collaboration, enabling businesses to improve their processes and execute faster. Cloud-based applications also establish data integrity and provide actionable insights with real-time reporting. With the cloud, organizations can save a significant amount of time parsing through data sets, bolster worker satisfaction and improve efficiency across the board. Companies will also see considerable cost savings, as the cloud cuts expenses per employee while reducing travel, transportation and utility costs. These benefits are becoming too good for leaders to ignore, pushing them to move workloads into the cloud.
The cloud has become a necessity for modern business users. With significant security improvements and increased familiarity with the technology, organizations are finding that now is the perfect time to migrate their network and start reaping the benefits. For more information on moving your network to the cloud, contact Afinety today.
Find The Right Cloud Solution For Your Law Practice
The legal sector are increasingly realizing the benefits that cloud environments can offer. However, each platform is different and can impact how organizations operate. By following a few easy steps, you can find the right cloud solution for your law firm.
First, you’ll need to understand the different types of available cloud environments and services. These options provide unique benefits and support a variety of features. You can use this knowledge to make more educated decisions and provision it correctly.
It will also be important to ensure that your provider has a track record serving businesses in your industry. This ensures that they will understand your pain points and can configure your cloud to fit your needs. To learn more about finding the right cloud solution for legal practices, visit Afinety today.
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The cloud has become significantly more secure.![How To Find The Right Cloud Solution [Video]](https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/client/q_glossy,ret_img,w_1000,h_750/https://afinety.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/14095292.jpeg)