Beyond just sharing, with Google Cloud Connect Microsoft Office users can edit Office documents….simultaneously. Up until now simultaneous editing of a document has been unavailable for Microsoft Office users. Also, documents can be shared and accessed from any computer with an Internet connection, whether that’s across the room or across the Country; no special VPN or remote access software required. Oh, and just for good measure Google threw in automatic document versioning too.

We found Google Cloud Connect to be very powerful and easy to use.

UPDATE: In our testing we’ve seen some issues with Cloud Connect. This is a new feature and we’re confident that Google will resolve the issues quickly.

Wikipedia defines a profit center as:

Business organizations may be organized in terms of profit centers where the profit center’s revenues and expenses are held separate from the main company’s in order to determine their profitability. Usually different profit centers are separated for accounting purposes so that the management can follow how much profit each center makes and compare their relative efficiency and profit. Examples of typical profit centers are a store, a sales organization and a consulting organization whose profitability can be measured.

According to Wikipedia, a cost center is defined as (emphasis added):

Companies may choose to classify business units as cost centres, profit centres, or investment centres. There are some significant advantages to classifying simple, straightforward divisions as cost centres, since cost is easy to measure. However, cost centres create incentives for managers to underfund their units in order to benefit themselves, and this underfunding may result in adverse consequences for the company as a whole (reduced sales because of bad customer service experiences, for example).

Because the cost centre has a negative impact on profit (at least on the surface) it is a likely target for rollbacks and layoffs when budgets are cut. Operational decisions in a contact centre, for example, are typically driven by cost considerations. Financial investments in new equipment, technology and staff are often difficult to justify to management because indirect profitability is hard to translate to bottom-line figures.

That’s quite a difference! On the one hand a profit center is used to drive overall revenues. On the other hand a cost center establishes managerial incentive to undercut budgets which can lead to overall poor business performance.

Traditionally, IT has been seen as a cost center. However, our experience has shown that our most financially successful clients view their IT as a profit center. These clients leverage their IT expenditures to further the goals of the business. As a result, their systems and processes run smoothly and they have overall reduced costs and satisfied clients. They invest in their IT because they know IT is not just a cost but believe it will help them become more profitable. They turn IT from a cost center to a profit center!

The good news is that each business can choose how they classify their Information Technology. While IT does not directly close sales, it does help the sales team. While IT cannot resolve customer satisfaction issues, it can be used to make that process efficient. In today’s busienss, IT touches every part of a business.

Expenditures on IT may not always be directly measurable in ROI, but look at the positive impact IT expenses have on direct revenue producing activities and how IT plays a role for your business. Once you do, ask yourself: does that sound like IT should be a cost center or a profit center to you?

We thank everyone for a great 2008 and look forward to an even better 2009!

To celebrate the holidays, Network Velocity will be closed December 25th and 26th and January 1st and 2nd. In the event of an emergency please call our office and leave a message. An on-call technician will call you back.