There’s no doubt about it, COVID has changed the world. Somethings for the better, somethings for the worse, and technology has been no different.
At the start of the pandemic we watched as business scrambled to get their businesses working remotely to ‘survive’. It wasn’t about providing the best experience, it was about providing AN experience. Many companies struggled with aging solutions that just ‘needs to work’ – with no additional budget, lack of strategy and a lax focus on security. This has led to many businesses left with inefficient systems that could be costing a premium for less features.
How do I know if my solution is correct? (the age old saying 'you don’t know what you don’t know!'.
There’s no black and white answer to this one but the following symptoms warrant a deeper look for inadequate technology strategies and solutions:
- Your working from a clunky remote server or computer.
- Having to email documents around or dumping them into a Teams channel, creating mess?
- Worried about where all your data is being stored?
- Not sure what happens when employee goes rogue and deletes documents while being terminated?
- Freezing or dropping out.
- Your phones are being diverted from the office, at times appear engaged, can’t receive voicemails or have staff working off their personal mobile phones.
Working from home shouldn’t give your employees a second-tier technology experience. The experience should be as good as if they were in the office.
“Okay, so what SHOULD it look like?”
Your solution should be easy, fast, feature rich and include the following:
- Being able to work on files on the computer locally through Microsoft Office.
- IT being confident where is data is located and how it is protected.
- All files are backed up, even the ones on your laptop’s local desktop.
- Have documented supporting processes of how a new employee is setup and more importantly, how to handle an exiting employee.
- IT can provide support to your users, no matter where their physical location is.
- Your office local phone number rings at your computer (or mobile phone app), so even your clients don’t know you’re working from home.
“It sounds great but we’re too busy to have our systems down for long periods while you upgrade”
Rolling out a new technology doesn’t have to be disruptive (and shouldn’t be!). Managing change is the most important piece of project delivery, so our delivery methods usually entail:
- Building a new solution side-by-side from the existing one, without causing disruption.
- Review the solution with a few key employees as apart of our User Acceptance Testing.
- Providing companywide training via Microsoft Teams to ensure everyone is comfortable of the change.
- Activate the new solution in batches to ensure a smooth transition, answering queries as they arise.
“Again it sounds great, but it also sounds expensive?”
This is the silly thing, in a lot of cases we have seen businesses spend LESS per month on their cloud subscriptions using the correct up to date solution for their business.
Maybe it’s time to hit the reset button on your old solution and see what’s out there.
Feel free to get in contact with us for a no obligation discussion on what your business technology SHOULD look like.