3 Step Cloud Onboarding Plan

The cloud can be intimidating for companies. Many business leaders and even IT professionals don’t know what impact cloud-based file sharing will have on their business, what the risks are and whether it will add another layer of complexity to their organization.

When they do decide to adopt the cloud, many businesses are ready to jump in head first, but that doesn’t mean you should let them. It also doesn’t mean their initial concerns have been completely washed away.

Before any cloud implementation, MSPs should prepare their client, and themselves, for the project ahead. To do so, there are a few things you need to educate your client on, a few things you need to ask your client and a few things you should both agree on before getting started.

Find Out Their Reasons for Adopting Cloud Services

Before you can put together a successful cloud implementation, you need to know what your client’s goals and expectations are going in. While companies can see many of the same benefits, your strategy should focus on the specific benefits most important to them. This will also help provide benchmarks to measure success later on in the project.

According to CompTIA, some of the top reasons for businesses to move to the cloud are:

• Desire to cut costs (50%)
• Simple a better option (44%)
• Reduce capital expenditure (43%)
• Modernization of legacy IT (42%)
• Reduce complexity (42%)

Address Your Client’s Infrastructure Issues

As their MSP, you should offer value to your clients beyond simply applying your solutions. In order to understand specifically how your solutions can help them and how they’ll fit into the businesses overall architecture, you should gain a deep understanding of their existing organization and infrastructure.

To get a complete understanding, there are three areas you should focus:

• Who manages each aspect of their digital assets? Who is in charge of their digital project development, social media, technical infrastructure and others?
• What solutions have they already implemented? Whether they realize it or not, most businesses are already in the cloud with web hosting, email, social media, customer relationship management, and other cloud technologies.
• What goals and metrics are they already measuring? Before setting your own metrics, understand their current KPIs to see what is a priority and what is already working.

Craft a Complete Cloud Implementation Plan

We’ve written in the past about business leader’s urges to jump into the cloud as quickly as possible and your goal of slowing them down and setting up a plan. It can be difficult when the business is eager to implement a number of services all at once to slow them down and put together a more complete plan. This step is necessary though if you want the relationship to be long-lasting and successful.

Before any cloud services are implemented you should sit down with the business leaders and put together a clear, long-term plan for how they will roll-out cloud-based services. This will allow you to carefully evaluate every solution you add and make sure it builds on the overall system. It will also improve adoption if pieces are added gradually instead of a disorganized jumble of cloud services thrown at employees all at once.

While you and your client may be eager to get started with your cloud implementation, taking the time to complete these tasks will ensure that the initial project goes off much smoother, your clients concerns are addressed and your stage is set for a long, successful relationship.