Due to COVID-19 many organisations have employees working from home at the moment, but do they have the technology in place to work as effectively remotely as they would in the office?
For a lot of organisations this may be the first time that they have really had to test whether they have the capacity for their teams to work from home and many are finding their technology is not as resilient as they had expected. This can be as simple as not having enough laptop and mobile devices available and having to rely on unsecure home devices to not having the sort of collaboration tools which make communicating and sharing work easy to achieve.
An ideal situation would see your home workers being able to operate exactly as they would within the office, with seamlessly access to documents and data and the ability to easily share work with other team members and customers. Whilst being easily accessible to customers via your phone system or video conferencing.
Below are a number of solutions that should be considered vital to include within a successful remote working strategy.
Cloud:
Remote workers love the cloud because it provides a simple and secure experience where they can sign in from anywhere on any device.
Cloud computing increases security and gives users access to a remote virtual work environment so they can access all the same systems, applications and data, that they could when they are in the office. Cloud computing is also cost-effective, convenient and secure.
Microsoft Teams:
Microsoft Teams is the perfect tool for home workers that enables them to simply communicate, collaborate and share with other members of their teams wherever they are located. Features include Chat, File Sharing, Team Conversations and Team meetings via both audio and video. Microsoft Teams integrates with Office 365 and is also included within the free license.
Unified Communications:
Unified Communication brings together your email, text and voice seamlessly with live voice, audio, video conferencing, and web collaboration, in one easy to use interface. This makes it simple to integrate different interconnected communication channels into one simple channel.
You can seamlessly integrate your smartphone into the company communications system. Simply install an App on your mobile device, and your mobile phone instantly becomes a full-value extension of your phone system and is easily accessible even when out of the office.
Video Conferencing:
Phone conferencing solutions are old news. Today, when it comes to having meetings with remote employees and customers, you need video. Since these employees often cannot attend in-person meetings, video-conferencing has become one of the most helpful technologies for both in-house and remote employees.
Documents and Printing:
In some industries where physical documents are required having access to cloud-ready mobile printers that allow users to download, share, print, scan, distribute and even translate documents on the go from anywhere, via laptop, tablet or smart phone is essential.
Security:
Cyber Security has been at the top of the agenda for many organisations and home working should not comprise this. As mentioned above cloud provides the ideal solution for secure access. Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) provides an extra layer of security to make ensure that those trying to gain access to an online account are who they say they are. With 2FA, a user will enter their username and a password. Then, instead of immediately gaining access, they will be required to provide another piece of information.
Clearly there are a lot of things for organisations to think about when setting a remote working strategy and in an ideal world it should be implemented and tested prior to requiring it.
EBC Group have created bespoke solutions for their clients that enable their teams to work effectively and at maximum productivity. They have also been working closely with others since the outbreak of Coronavirus to create secure and efficient home work environments.
If you would like to find out more about the range of remote working solutions that EBC Group can assist you with please get in contact or phone 0121 585 4400.