Telecommuting is the new way of working. The days when people had to be physically present at work are far behind. Working from home is a more cost effective, efficient, and easy option. That is why many companies have adopted it fully or partially. Cloud computing helps telecommuting to be effective because there are so many applications hosted online you can use to work efficiently from home.
The life of a telecommuter can be hectic. You probably have different current project, briefs, timelines, and so much more. This means that if you don’t have an effective project management system, disorganization and mismanagement will be the result. Different project management systems are available via cloud computing. These allow you to manage your projects, keep track of correspondence, assign to-do lists, and so forth, to ensure that your projects run smoothly.
Invoicing can be a nightmare for telecommuters. Keeping track of all of your clients’ details and payments due may force you to hire an accountant. This can only happen for an extra expense. There are different cloud-accounting systems like Freshbooks which allow you to invoice clients in a straightforward manner. This can cut the stress that comes with manually creating invoices and chasing after clients to pay for your services or products.
Most telecommuting jobs require you to handle documents: write, keep records, send, and receive reports. They make the lifeline of a telecommuter. There are different documenting platforms available for telecommuters, such as Google Documents. Such a solution not only allows you to complete word processing tasks, but also to create spreadsheets and presentations, without having to pay for a software package that does the same tasks.
Telecommuters often need to share files too large to be sent via e-mails. There are different cloud file sharing solutions online you can rely on for this function. Some of them allow you to share a substantial amount of data for free. Others are paid hosting, where, for a fee, you can share huge files with clients easily.
For most telecommuters, e-mail communication is crucial. Although the free versions of the e-mail hosting platforms, such as Gmail or Yahoo can offer sufficient data capacity, sometimes you may need extra megabytes and this comes with an additional cost.
There are some clients who prefer face-to-face communications with their contractors. For telecommuters, VoIP calls or Skype are excellent choices.
Overall, cloud computing has a solution for any function that is part of a telecommuter’s job. These are only few of the cloud solutions you can rely on to boost your efficiency.
By Gregory Musungu
