One of the most common reasons businesses have for not optimizing processes or implementing modern software solutions is simply that “we’ve always done it this way.” We get it—sure, your file transfer process is a little time-consuming and your FTP tool doesn’t have the most up-to-date security features, but your business is doing fine. Why spend the time and money to implement a new solution?
Here’s why: scalability. A robust managed file transfer solution implemented now is key to business growth—and increased profits—down the road. The third installment of this series on the ROI of managed file transfer solutions focuses on how investing in MFT can help you scale your business.
Automate Processes
Martin Zwilling writes in Forbes that one of the keys to a scalable startup is to “automate to the max,” as the business will not be able to grow if it is both labor-intensive and staff-intensive.
File transfers are often critical to a wide variety of processes in businesses of all sizes, so companies can find themselves adding staff to cover the hours of manual work. This is especially true when you add in tasks like checking for file arrivals or compressing and encrypting files before the transfer. A managed file transfer solution can handle these multi-step workflows automatically, so increasing your volume of file transfers won’t require hours of additional labor or more employees.
Adoption of managed file transfer is increasing every year. That means that others in your industry have chosen to move beyond basic FTP tools. Given the pace of modern business, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain a competitive edge without automating your file transfer processes.
Anticipate Changes
A growing company often not only faces more hours of work, but new requirements. As you add trading partners, you may need to use a variety of transfer methods. It’s worth the investment to implement an MFT solution that can handle multiple protocols and encryption methods rather than trying to juggle several tools.
Do you have industry regulations to comply with? The work involved in staying compliant and keeping adequate records for an auditor will only grow as your business grows. Get a managed file transfer tool that automatically keeps a detailed audit log to simplify compliance. This will also help if you face new regulations in the future.
IT environments tend to become more complex over time as disparate applications are added to critical processes. In the case of acquisitions or mergers, you may find yourself with multiple applications for the same purpose. Your managed file transfer software should provide commands and APIs for interfacing with your applications.
Related Reading: iPaaS and MFT: What You Need to Know
When confronted with new business requirements, too many organizations turn to custom scripting. If you have talented programmers at your disposal, scripts may seem like the obvious solution, but they are risky for your business, especially as you grow. Maintaining and updating the scripts whenever your requirements change is time-consuming, risky and expensive. If the programmer writing the scripts leaves your organization, you may not have anyone who understands how all of your sprawling scripts work. And if something fails, there’s no helpline to save your business from costly downtime.
Balance Your Workload and Avoid Disaster
Clustering multiple installations of your managed file transfer solution provides a distributed environment for handling file transfer services for the enterprise. This provides two advantages essential to your growing organization. The first is high availability. If one system suffers a network or hardware failure, the remaining systems in the cluster will continue to process file transfers and run workflows—especially important as you have to meet an increasing number of SLAs.
Secondly, clustering allows you to scale the solution horizontally by adding additional systems to the cluster. The workload can be distributed across all systems in order to increase performance.
Implementing MFT software gives you an immediate ROI thanks to time savings, increased reliability, and protection against security risks, but don’t forget to also take into consideration the payoff as your business scales. Ready to give managed file transfer a try? Get the free trial of GoAnywhere.
If you missed the first 2 installments in our series on the ROI of Managed File Transfer, please click the links to read Part 1 on time savings or Part 2 on security.
