If your construction firm is using – or plans to use – Sage 100 Contractor on-premise, then you are losing out on gaining true visibility into all of your teams and projects, including onsite at each location. From the jobsite to the back office, data remains siloed until it is manually passed along when working in legacy systems, slowing down your operations. Migrating to the cloud, however, knocks down these barriers and enables your team to communicate from anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection.
Continue reading below to learn more about how hosting Sage 100 Contractor in a cloud-based environment will give you real-time access to the information you need from any jobsite:
How the Cloud Provides Remote Access to Your Construction Jobsite
Cloud computing is based on Internet connectivity, and thus captures the benefits of web-based functionality for your accounting software. Whereas the legacy approach leaves your application locked to a local server or workstation, a hosted solution can be accessed from anywhere and at any time, as long you remain connected. While there are other options for remote access between devices in different locations, many of these feature significant drawbacks – lack of inherent security, lack of scalability, etc. – and do not bring all of the same benefits as leveraging cloud-based methods:
Real-time Connectivity
When you host Sage 100 Contractor in the cloud, every authorized user is plugged into the same live software environment, as opposed to having to create individual and more temporal connections to be able to access data and systems. Updates entered from someone in the field are visible to employees in the office, without any lag in waiting for files to be imported or exported.
Access from Any Device
Many on-premise solutions were designed well before the digital world became so interconnected and consequently lack true integration or cross-device functionality, and even those that could allow a user to connect their tablet or smartphone often lack the security protections needed for modern cyber threats. The cloud provides more seamless and more defendable ways to bridge users between locations and your software reporting databases.
The Full Benefits of Real-time Visibility Through the Cloud
There are several immediate benefits that come when hosting your Sage 100 Contractor accounting software in a cloud-based environment, including:
See Activities as They Happen
On-premise systems retain siloed databases and force everyone to pass along information the old-fashioned way through manual uploads, communication and even filing paper when the system’s functionality creates too many roadblocks for sharing data electronically. When your construction application is hosted in the cloud, reports are visible as soon as they are entered into the shared environment.
Maintain Connections Between Teams
Construction projects are rarely run by a single team working from a single location, and keeping everyone aligned across the office, jobsites and service crews becomes increasingly difficult when each group is operating off its own copy of the data. When your accounting software is hosted in the cloud, every authorized user connects to the same instance, meaning that a change entered by one team is immediately visible to all others without any additional steps to push or pull the update.
Reduce Time Spent on Workflows
Too many construction firms are still manually tracking project details in spreadsheets because their legacy accounting software cannot be accessed in the field, making real-time data entry impractical and leaving office staff to reconcile information after the fact. Hosting your construction software in the cloud eliminates that gap, allowing field teams to enter data directly into the live system from any device, which means job cost updates, change orders and progress billing records stay current without depending on manual transfers between locations.
Other Benefits of Hosting Sage 100 Contractor
The cloud provides additional benefits for construction firms using Sage 100 Contractor beyond real-time access between your office and your jobsites. Here are a few of the top improvements you will see:
Security
On-premise systems carrying remote desktop connections introduce significant exposure, and maintaining the patching, access controls and backup protocols required to protect them in-house places demands on internal IT resources that most construction firms are not staffed to absorb. A cloud hosting provider manages security at the infrastructure level, with consistent patching, access management and data protection built into the service rather than delegated to your team.
Scalability
The performance capabilities of on-premise software is limited to whatever hardware you can afford to deploy locally, placing a strict ceiling on the processing power you can capture onsite. Cloud hosting removes that ceiling by allowing you to scale computing resources up or down based on your current needs, without purchasing or configuring additional physical equipment – your environment adjusts as your project volume and user count changes, rather than requiring a hardware investment each time your business grows.
Maintenance
Cloud-hosted environments make it much easier to perform software development in a controlled space without having to disrupt your live application. Rather than scheduling downtime around your team’s working hours to apply patches or service the server, your cloud service provider handles those tasks on their end – your construction software stays current, and your team keeps working.
Hybrid Cloud
Not every business is ready to migrate everything to a strictly digital environment at once, but thankfully that does not have to be the starting point for capturing the benefits of cloud-based computing. A hybrid cloud lets your tap into the best of both worlds, hosting an application like Sage 100 Contractor through a datacenter while you retain other on-premise resources you have already invested in, for just one example. This allows your firm to be flexible in migrating your solutions without having to overhaul your existing IT infrastructure at once.
How to Migrate Sage 100 Contractor to the Cloud
Migrating your on-premise construction accounting software to the cloud will require hosting it in an external datacenter, generally through a certified third-party parter. These CSPs (cloud service providers) take on the responsibility of standing up and maintaining the hosted environment, including the server infrastructure, security and backup systems. Working with a partner that has direct experience hosting Sage 100 Contractor is important, as the architecture of a legacy application deployed in the cloud differs from a native SaaS solution, and your CSP needs to understand those differences to set up your environment correctly.
Learn More About Hosting Sage 100 Contractor with SWK Technologies
If you are ready to move your Sage 100 Contractor reporting from disconnected silos into a secure, unified environment that all of your authorized users can access from any location, SWK Technologies will help you get there. Our team has the experience to migrate your construction accounting software to the cloud without disrupting your existing operations or your data.
Contact SWK here to learn more about how cloud hosting for Sage 100 Contractor will give your team real-time access to the data you need from anywhere and at any time.