Is your team working from home? They might be soon!
Coronavirus is a test of your Business Continuity Plan. While we don’t want to add to panic, there are things to consider if you and your team are asked to quarantine.
When we help organisations plan for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery, most have no trouble imagining hardware failure, power outage or even a cyber attack. But a virus that can bring business to a standstill by shutting down your office? Or that closes schools and public transport? Not so believable until now.
Your plan
Do you know you can keep business running smoothly with all staff working from home? Can you communicate effectively, setting up meetings, keeping collaboration going?This kind of planning depends on having the right tools in place for easy communication, collaboration and getting resources to those who need them. This requires thinking ahead, or chances are it won’t be successful.
Thanks to Covid-19, all businesses have to plan for lockdown. Here are some considerations:
What kind of work?
If you have to work with very large files, dragging these across a small, home Internet link will be frustrating at best, unusable at worst. If you use special applications that are only available in the office, or won’t work across an Internet link, these don’t lend themselves to remote working without extra setup. Many business applications need users close by on a fast local network.
Your situation might need a Remote Desktop setup – where you login to a specially setup Remote Desktop Server or even to a desktop PC. Both need planning and some resources.
How many people would you need to support working from remote? Remote connections use up bandwidth, and may require VPN licences. The firewall may also have limited capacity, Your setup may be designed to support half a dozen remote workers and would crash if you try to connect more.
Get ahead of the game
Are you prepared? We are currently receiving a large number of requests for setup of remote access. In many cases, there are limitations that will reduce what the business can do.
Next step
We can help, but we can do a whole lot better with time to plan. Send your answers to these questions, we will tell you what your environment can support and give you some options if needed.
- What critical functions would your business need to continue through a lockdown period?
- Which of these can be done from remote?
- Which staff (name them) would you want by priority to be able to work from home?
- What key resources would these staff working from home need to have access to?
- Do all nominated staff have access to a suitable home work space including computer?
A little forward planning can help us help you. Give us a call if you would like to discuss options. FooForce can work with you to minimise risk – whatever the source!
If you would like a chat about any aspect of your IT, feel free to call/email anytime.