We’ve all been hearing in the news lately about outbreaks of the novel coronavirus and its effect on other countries and their economies, workplaces, schools, and general daily life.
Whether or not an outbreak will occur in our communities (hopefully not), current events have posed an interesting question: if an emergency arises, how can businesses coordinate an office- wide work-from-home setup? In this newsletter, we’ll layout what you need to know to make sure your business can continue to run effectively during a possible quarantine.
- Have remote-access software or VPN installed on office and home computers:
To make sure that each one of your team members will be able to fully complete their work duties from home, they’ll need to have the some kind of remote-access software (e.g. Go to My PC, Log Me In) installed on both their home/personal and office computers. This will allow your team to operate their computers as if they were sitting in the office itself, clicking around their desktop and opening their files. There are other alternatives such as VPN that utilizes your firewall router to allow safe access to your network.
- Get or use Office 365 and move your data to the cloud:
Office 365 is a cloud-based suite of software that allows your team to collaborate and share information. It’s extremely useful in everyday routine office work, no pandemic needed, but will be essential when working from home our outside office. Also find out if your application software can be hosted in the cloud or move to the cloud without any issues.
- Get VOIP phones and forward your phones:
If there is no one in the office you may want to forward your phones. One of the beauties of having VOIP phones is that you can plug them anywhere.
- Have a video-conferencing software (Skype, Zoom, etc.) installed on your computers:
To make up for the inability to have face-to-face meetings with your team, you might find it useful to set up a video conferencing system that will allow you to keep the face-to-face aspect but from your individual locations. Skype and Zoom are both free to download.
- Make sure you have strong enough bandwidth:
Make sure you have enough bandwidth and fast enough computers to accommodate all the remote connections. Because you’ll be utilizing high internet bandwidth levels and lots of processor speed and memory to process all your data from each team members’ respective remote location. The exact specs of tech required will depend on each individual organization’s data load and level of communication required.
- Check out the compliance and regulations for your Industry:
It is important to make sure the remote access of your data does not jeopardize any regulatory compliance such as HIPAA, PCI and others. You may want to disable the printing capability or restrict certain information.
- Utilize services like Dropbox to store important information, so that all team members can access it
You and your team will need to be accessing the same sources in order to work together remotely, and Dropbox provides two gigabytes of data free, which should be plenty to last through a month of quarantine for most businesses.
- Alert your clients and vendors to your situation and how it might affect your response and efficiency.
While your community may be undergoing an epidemic, your client or vendor in another location might not be affected to the same degree. You’ll want to communicate your exact situation and capabilities and how they might affect business as usual.
While your community may be undergoing an epidemic, your client or vendor in another location might not be affected to the same degree. You’ll want to communicate your exact situation and capabilities and how they might affect business as usual.
At IT21st, we can answer all your questions, analyzes your environment and prepare your business to handle any adversities.
Give us a call at IT21st: 855-448-2178 or visit us at: www.it21st.com for more information.
We serve Los Angeles, CA or any of the surrounding areas such as, Arcadia, CA, Burbank, CA, Chatsworth, CA, Culver City, CA, Downtown LA, Encino, CA, Glendale, CA, Hollywood, CA, Los Angeles, CA, North Hollywood, CA, Pasadena, CA, San Fernando, CA, Santa Monica, CA Sherman Oaks, CA Tarzana, CA Universal City, CA, Van Nuys, CA, West LA, Woodland Hills, CA and more
