In this post, we outline five of the key benefits to moving from an on-premise based IT system to a construction cloud solution. With expert insights from COINS Technical Services expert, Christa Richardson, we will break down everything from hardware costs to security. Let’s dive in! 

Reason 1: Minimise Upkeep Costs With Construction Cloud Solutions

Hardware replacement costs and server maintenance can be expensive. Not to mention the technical support time and effort required to continually maintain that equipment.    

Although it might be difficult to directly compare the costs of running infrastructure in the cloud to traditional on-premise deployments, the bottom line is that a cloud-hosted solution such as Access COINS will offer you options that would not only be very expensive to replicate with on-premise equipment, but also, in some cases, prove difficult or unfeasible, especially for smaller organisations.   

A construction cloud solution, such as Access COINS, converts traditional technology capital expenses into an operational expense, eliminating server and related equipment purchases, and boosting your construction companies cash flow flexibility. 

Reason 2: Optimal Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery planning has always been and continues to be a critical component to business continuity.  To best prepare for disaster recovery, construction cloud solutions offer features which guarantee minimal data loss in the event of a data centre failure. These measures minimise the risks associated with on-premise systems.  

To achieve this, Access COINS uses world-class disaster recovery and backup from The Access Group which guarantees minimal down time.  

Reason 3: Construction Cloud Solutions Increase Flexibility, Agility And Automation

There is growing demand for flexibility, agility and automation where users need faster computing performance and scalable resources. 

BMC reports that ‘from a business perspective, organisations are focusing on agility and automation as a means to facilitate faster time to value. To achieve this they are migrating mission critical IT workloads to the cloud to address those business demands.  Unlike traditional datacentre infrastructure that limits these capabilities, the public cloud model such as Microsoft Azure offers the flexibility to scale infrastructure resources on-demand.’ (Raza and Kidd, 2020) 

The power of the cloud makes it easy to scale your construction solution as you grow.  For instance, if you are adding more users or have acquired new businesses, cloud-hosted systems take care of increasing horsepower and resources on the server.   

With systems like Access COINS, gone are the days of being limited by the physical server equipment size or capabilities.  

Reason 4: More Time To Focus On Strategic Goals

Deploying a construction cloud solution in your business will relieve your IT team from the everyday burden of system administration tasks.   

Wave goodbye to the days of worrying about installing fixes or service packs, performing non-live environment refreshes, database tuning, version upgrades, backup monitoring, disaster recovery and server maintenance.   

Combining leading cloud-hosted software with excellent customer service and support, systems like Access COINS are able to manage all of this as well as continually monitoring the server and databases for maximum availability.   

These service will directly support your wider teams, lightening the workload on your IT specialists, and allowing everyone more time to focus on strategic business goals. 

Reason 5: Construction Cloud Solutions: A Secure Alternative

Security is most likely to be the main reason you may or may not be thinking about moving to a cloud-hosted construction ERP.   

Security is at the forefront of everyone’s mind especially with the frequent headline news of major organisations suffering from hacked services and networks.   

Some companies believe that having physical control of their servers is safer, while others see that security is more stringent with leading cloud-hosted software which use security systems such as Microsoft Azure Cloud.   

Regardless of where your company might stand on that debate, when it comes to security, Gartner’s forecast highlights the shifting focus toward cloud solutions to run mission-critical security and performance sensitive IT workloads.  

The cloud industry is proving that on-premise datacentre systems don’t automatically translate into stronger security and that cloud computing now offers a secure alternative.   

Now Is The Time To Move TO Access COINS 

Access COINS Construction ERP is built and hosted on Microsoft Azure, the leading cloud for business applications. While other solutions may be based on client-server software and require third-party infrastructure to run remotely, Access COINS construction software coupled with Azure eliminates all of that, enabling secure and resilient solutions out-of-the-box. 

COINS Construction Cloud also integrates with Microsoft 365, making Access COINS solutions easily compatible with SharePoint, Outlook, Teams and more. 

To talk to a COINS expert about making the move to a cloud construction solution please contact us