Technology in your business before COVID-19
Most small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) had been setup with traditional on-premises servers to store company data and run applications connected to desktop computers. While there is nothing wrong with that setup, it is not well positioned to support the rapid move to working from home.
How to get team members remote working
We have a number of solutions that can quickly be implemented and can be very cost-effective or, in some cases, free of charge.
Where your team members have laptops or are able to take their office systems home, we can connect these managed computers (computers where you have control over security) into your office network. We will use a secure data connection called a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Everything will run on the computer exactly as before with the network link using the public internet to connect the remote work to the office network. Some applications, notably Sage and QuickBooks do not work well in this setup as the internet pipe is too slow.
Where you don’t have team members with laptops, don’t want them to take office systems home, or they have their own unmanaged computer that can’t be connected via VPN due to security concerns, we can provide TeamViewer licenses free of charge. Team members would access a secure website and select their office system to control remotely. They will then use their office computer as if they were sitting in front of it. This option works well for a rapid setup and supports Sage and QuickBooks.
Longer term solutions
The businesses that most quickly adapted to the rapid changes forced on us by COVID-19 are those that made the move to cloud-based systems, where email and files are stored in Office365 and accounts in Xero or SageOne.
It isn’t quick to fully migrate a business, but it can speedily be setup to make it easier for business operations to work effectively when the team are all remote working, and makes available video conference tools such as Microsoft Teams.
