How your IT team can support the small business during the Coronavirus lockdown
As coronavirus disruption sweeps across the US, many small businesses will be turning to their in-house or outsourced IT teams for support during the lockdown.
During this transition from an office to a remote working environment, how can an in-house or outsourced IT team support small businesses in a coronavirus-induced lockdown?
There are five common areas where an IT team could support a small business, based on requests from his company’s clients.
1. Enabling call center colleagues to work from home
automatically re-routing customer inquiries to an agent’s mobile.
2. In-home appointments
when employees are making home visits for installs, deliveries or repairs, make automatic COVID-19 pre-checks with the customer to make sure it is safe for employees to visit.
3. Emergency communications
escalation comms for a situation when a workforce is suddenly dispersed during an emergency.
4. Bandwidth upgrades
the Financial Times has reported that the EU and the US have warned of significant broadband strain as millions work from home.
To combat this, small businesses need to ask their IT teams to upgrade potentially ‘capped’ broadband packages.
5. CEO broadcast to colleagues:
IT teams can facilitate CEO broadcasts to colleagues via video or phone through any number of conferencing solutions.
While there is no replacement for meeting face-to-face and being in the same room as a colleague or customer, video meetings are proven to be more effective than voice calls. In fact, 93% of employees say video calls improve interactions and client relationships. It’s a simple thing but seeing someone’s face as well as hearing their voice can be invaluable to remote workers.
Network and security:
On top of the front-end collaboration tools, small businesses and their IT teams need to focus on providing access to the office network and ensuring security in a lockdown or remote working environment.
A common complaint from home-workers is that they cannot access files and applications they use in the office.
This can be made possible through a virtual private network (VPN) and ensuring that all employees can connect to the company network gives them the feeling of being virtually in the office, even while working from home.
There are several security implications when moving to a sudden remote workforce using connections through home-based setups to the network increases the number of potential cyber threats.
To combat this, small businesses and their IT teams need to remind employees of their cybersecurity policies, offer practical advice and ensure all devices have up-to-date security software installed on endpoint devices, like laptops and mobile phones.
What if my small business doesn’t have the right technology?
Some small businesses won’t have the technology to support a remote working environment, which is an issue as serious as being able to ‘keep the lights on’.
There are companies can help with this immediate technology deployment.
Clarity is proud to have been providing Cloud or Hosted Telephony services to the Americas for many years including clients Worldwide offering our unified communications platform. Clarity Technologies Group, LLC surpasses expectations.
Call Clarity at 800-354-4160 today or email us at [email protected] . We are partnered internationally around the globe and we are open seven days a week 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM EST/EDT. http://45.33.92.219/ and https://dotmantech.com .
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