Gain greater resilience by building your business's remote working capability

The day to day running of your business is ever changing. Overseas travel, maternity leave, a sales demonstration in another city, are just a few examples of circumstances that require your team to work from somewhere other than the office. 

Therefore, building your business's remote working capability is essential to ensure greater business resilience and adaptability.

Two aspects critical to beginning this building process are; creating access to company data, and supporting effective communication within your team when working remotely.

The good news? There are plenty of great options available to achieve this.

Where your data lives and how your team works are unique to you, therefore finding the best fit for your business is important. The team at TechnologyWise are here to help you find that best fit, using a range of different technical solutions. 

Accessing your data remotely

Often, business data is located in a mix of places. Important documents may be in a team member's email account, on their desktop computer, or sitting printed out at their home desk. Other data may be stored on the business's server in your office (local server) or in 'The Cloud'.

Ensuring that all of your business data is somewhere safe and central is the first step.

Safe and central locations available for your data storage are either a local server, a Cloud-based server, or a hybrid of the two (hybrid cloud).

You may already have a server or cloud set up. If not, this is where TechnologyWise can begin to assist.

Your data already lives on a server in your office?

We can help you gain access to your data remotely using technologies like VPNs, remote desktops and terminal services. Each of these technologies allow you to make a secure connection between your team's remote computers, and the computers inside the office. Much like how banks talk to each other to move money between them, we can use similar secure systems to allow you access to your data.

Your data already lives in the Cloud? 

You are likely to be using Microsoft 365 or Google's GSuite for example. Alternately if you want to have total control over your data, NextCloud is an option worth exploring. Contact us if you want to know more. 

Effectively communicating as a team when remote

We and our clients have experienced that it gets much harder to coordinate effective communication when working remotely with email and phone calls alone.

You may be currently using Microsoft Teams, Skype, or Zoom for video calling. Or perhaps text or Slack for messaging.

Some of the digital solutions that have helped us effectively communicate, when remote, are:

BigBlueButton - video chat software that gives us the freedom to still have our team meetings, colleague discussions, and project collaboration while not missing out on vital aspects of communication (tone, body language, etc.)

Mattermost - secure instant messaging platform used to send general messages and documents to colleagues directly or via team channels (much like group chats on Facebook without needing a Facebook profile). Helps to reduce the amount of emails sent and received. 

If you'd like to have a chat with one of the team about building your business's remote working capability, please get in touch!