The meteorologists weren’t kidding around: The storm that hit the San Francisco Bay Area last week was a whopper. Dubbed “#hellastorm” by some cheeky Twitter users, the storm dumped an unprecedented amount of rain on the San Francisco Bay Area, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people and preventing employees from getting to work. But through some Silicon Valley ingenuity, employees at eFolder and other companies in San Francisco utilized cloud technology to get work done remotely, even as the storm raged on.

No matter where your clients are located, severe weather conditions or natural disasters can affect their ability to come into the office anytime. Backup and file sync technologies can help your clients remain productive, whether they’re forced to stay home or are on the road. Here’s how your clients can use business-class file sync and cloud backup solutions to keep business going, whether they’re in the office or not.

1. File Sync

Business-class file sync and share services are essential for companies with multiple employees who need to share data with one another. File sync allows employees to work on any device they want, whether it’s their Windows notebook at the office, their personal Mac at home or their Android phone on the go. Though many companies, especially smaller ones with lower budgets, try to get by with consumer-grade services such as Dropbox or OneDrive, using these non-secure solutions can open up a whole can of worms because administrators lack oversight into what and with whom important business files can be shared.

As an MSP, your responsibility to your clients is to educate them on the secure options they have for file sync and sharing, including eFolder Anchor. With Anchor, employees get the features they enjoy, while business owners and their MSP rest easy knowing they have visibility and control over what data is shared and can remotely wipe a lost or stolen device.

2. Salesforce

The days of desktop CRM software are long gone–Salesforce famously proclaims “No software!” as a key selling point, and businesses around the world have clearly seen the benefits of cloud-based CRM software. But with hundreds or even thousands of employees using Salesforce within a single organization to import leads, track opportunities and follow up with promising leads, it becomes easy for important data to be permanently deleted by accident. Flawed imports or admin mistakes can permanently destroy data. What would your clients do in such a scenario?

A comprehensive backup solution for Salesforce allows administrators to easily retrieve any important leads, contacts, campaigns and more that have accidentally been deleted from Salesforce’s recycle bin. Here at eFolder, even though our sales team could not come into the office, they confidently made calls to their prospects and leveraged Salesforce from their home offices–while eFolder management gained peace of mind knowing every bit of data was backed up by eFolder Cloudfinder.                                                                    

3. Office 365

Nearly every businesses uses Microsoft Office, and with Office 365, Microsoft has fully embraced the cloud. It’s no wonder, then, that plenty of small- and medium-sized businesses have flocked to Microsoft’s latest offering, since they are able to easily collaborate with others while still getting the desktop-class capabilities they love. While the convenience of storing emails, contacts, calendars and more in the cloud is undeniable, many businesses–including your clients–don’t have an adequate backup strategy for Office 365. Though data loss due to system failure is highly unlikely, user error or flawed data migrations could spell disaster.

Educating your clients on the advantages of Cloudfinder for Office 365–a robust backup, search and recovery service for Microsoft’s cloud offering–can help you gain more clients while empowering them to confidently move productivity to the cloud.

Conclusion

Just because a storm shuts down your clients’ offices or their employees are on the move shouldn’t mean business can’t continue as normal. With eFolder’s leading cloud offerings, including robust file sync and sharing and cloud backup, you can provide your clients with the confidence to work from anywhere. Learn more about eFolder Anchor and Cloudfinder at efolder.net. 

Neeraj Periwal is Marketing Coordinator, eFolder. Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s Cloud-based File Syncing and Sharing Infocenter.