Remote businesses let you leverage the power of a team of employees with some cost-cutting benefits. The lack of office space means you have no rent to worry about every month – plus additional savings via no office energy bills, no office equipment costs, etc.
However, working remotely does come with some flaws. If you’re not careful, your business will never succeed. But, play your cards right and you can have a highly successful remote organization. Below, you will find three things you need to make your remote business work:
Cloud Services
First and foremost, you need a suite of cloud services to run your company remotely. This may include things like Azure Virtual Desktop, Google Docs, and so on. Cloud services let you conduct work via the cloud, which can then be accessed by multiple people at once. To put it simply, without the cloud there is no way for collaboration.
Do your research into different business cloud services to figure out which one is the best for your company. Ensure your employees know how to use the services, and you’ll be able to communicate and work together seamlessly.
A Team In The Right Timezone
Ideally, you want your team to be in the same time zone as one another. An hour or two here and there won’t hurt, but you may run into productivity issues when people are running on completely different schedules. You need your team to work at the same time so you can collaborate effectively.
If everyone is on the same schedule, things can move with fewer slip-ups. It’s good to hire people from different backgrounds for sure, just make sure your team can all work at the same time.
A Business Model That Works Remotely
This may be the last point on our list, but it is by far the most integral for business success. There’s no point in switching to remote working if your business model doesn’t suit it. What we mean is that some business ideas are perfect for remote work while others are not.
If your business model involves face-to-face contact with clients, you can’t run a remote company. A remote business only works when the products/services you sell can be sold remotely. This sounds very obvious, but you’ll be amazed how many people try to run remote companies and fail because their business model doesn’t fit.
For more context, some great ideas for remote business models include:
- Online consultancy firms
- Selling software packages
- Digital marketing agencies
- Content creation agencies
We can list more ideas as well, but this should give you an idea of what works.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking a remote business is bound to be successful. People make this mistake as they see the cost savings and assume nothing can go wrong. If that were the case, we’d all be highly successful entrepreneurs! Remote companies can work under certain circumstances. Heighten your chances of succeeding by ensuring you have all three of the things mentioned above in place.
