By definition, a crisis erupts without notice. For any business, the best antidote for a crisis is resilience — the capacity to recover quickly and spring back into action.
One way a crisis can help us is if it exposes shortcomings, we can address them to improve our position for the next time.
In light of COVID-19, here are some office technology questions to consider.
Is your technology able to support your staff, and is it structured to work remotely?
You’re either going to find out where your weaknesses are, or if you’re not sure, Mainstream can help evaluate your technology, identify any weaknesses there may be, and put a plan together so it works better for you in the future.
Are you able to conduct business securely?
Working remotely means working outside the perimeter which can be risky. Remote access can expose you to individual internet connections and create vulnerabilities. For example, if you piggyback onto offsite computers to access the office computer, you open yourself up to scams, exploits, phishing attacks and brute force cyber attacks.
There are secure ways to connect back to the office. When a perimeter needs to be breached, we have the tools to create a secure connection without you having to take a gamble.
Are you as effective working remotely as being in the office?
For example, can your staff take incoming office phone calls or make outgoing office calls? Can they conduct meetings and collaborate with 3rd parties while working remotely?
Effectiveness extends beyond just being able to log in. You may find that your system works at home, but not quite as well as if you were on site.
For office calls, we have a VOIP partner we can refer to you who can help with setting up the foundation for the Office 365 TEAMS solution. TEAMS allows you to both make and receive office calls from anywhere. SKYPE is another product available in Office 365. Both TEAMS and SKYPE enable remote collaboration and connectivity. We use them both to run our business.
How are printing and scanning being handled while working remotely? Are you able to print to where you want? We can help identify why things aren’t working as well as they could be and make the changes to improve remote effectiveness.
Another question to ask is, is your IT staff able to support everything remotely or are they hamstrung when off-site? This speaks directly to Mainstream’s Managed Services. We are both comfortable and effective at working remotely. We have the bandwidth, the capabilities, and the depth to assure our customer’s systems are working well whether we’re working remotely or at the office.
Do you have a single point of failure with your staff?
When possible, you want to eliminate single points of failure. Being down a key person could be crippling, or worse.
With COVID-19, everyone is at risk. If a key player gets sick and has to come off the board, what would happen? Would it put your technology at risk?
One of the value propositions of our Managed Services is that you’re paying a company for support rather than relying on a single person. We have multiple resources and redundancies in place so we can deploy the skills you need, when you need them and do it remotely, just like we’ve been doing for over 20 years.
Are the things you take for granted to protect your company every day, working as they should, even when you’re not in the office?
For example, are backups still working on schedule with safety nets in place?
This speaks directly to Managed Services and Managed Security because we’re watching all the time. We’re making sure that the backups are running. We’re making sure that the monitoring is working as it should be. We’re on the job whether or not you’re in the office. We’re keeping tabs of everything important and making sure it’s all performing as if everybody was in the office.
