Work from Home and Remote Access for Small Business

 

Work from Home and Remote Access for Small Business

 

This pandemic has taught us many things and one of those things includes being flexible and adaptable in business. Not all business has opportunities to be completely flexible and adaptable according to business situations but all business has certain avenues to do so.

Adaptability can be seen as being lean in operations, reduce overhead costs, revisiting technology and recurring expenses, offering employee flexibility, entering into online marketplace, creating digital presence and marketing, reducing maintenance costs are to name a few. If researched properly, many businesses needs just few small steps can help cover the basics and make business more flexible to be adaptable. Every business is different with varying scope of changes.

Many businesses which are office based, who share common space and technology to perform day to day tasks. A work from home setup is very fruitful for those businesses as it allows to be lean, reduce big office space cost and employees get flexibility in order continue work when commute or reachability to office space is limited.

Various employees do feel that they prefer the shared office environment, while a large sum of employees enjoy the perk of staying home, escaping driving and traffic, saving commute time and vehicle maintenance cost and luxury of more flexible hours when needed to accomplish tasks.

Work from home setups varies for different business based on their operations and technology needs. We can breakdown them in 4 types :

1)    Single Office Information Resource Sharing (SOIRS)

2)    Multiple Office Information Resource Sharing(MOIRS)

3)    Single Office Information Resource and Technology Tools Sharing (SOITS)

4)    Multiple Office Information Resource and Technology Tools Sharing(MOITS)

 

SOIRS and MOIRS are for the business and office who work in group and share data with each other. Each employee needs to connect to office to access the data or information in order to read, edit or update it.  This workgroup needs a Network Storage Server or Server with network storage which can be accessed remotely. Each employee gets access credentials to access specific type of information required based on their profile by IT Administrator. A good example would be a Law firm or Accounting Office where all Client details and related documents are securely stored at one place within office. Employees access the data as needed for review, certain employees can modify or edit information. Various construction and Builder use similar platform where group of engineers create plans and associated information related to project and save them on server, while onsite employees access this data and plans to carry out project and update trackers or project completion report for engineers and project managers to review.

SOITS and MOITS are little different the first types as it involves addition sharing capability, sharing of technology tools, such as certain centralized software or application which is installed on server. Also, includes various SaaS programs which are non-cloud based or have restricted access settings to be accessed through specific network points. This are more complex server settings where these software and applications are installed and ran. It has its own network security layer and connectivity to other servers and office for seamless operations and execution of information. A secured VPN service is used on these server to access information. Business like Insurance Brokers, Mortgage Brokers, Financial Analysts, Software development, CRM based and IT companies benefits from these setup to allow employee access information as well as proprietary software tools while working from home. For more secured or private access, employee computers can be pre-installed with VPN login and secured access to keep company data within that device with sharing protection to prevent data theft using removable devices.

There are various benefits and key factors which define what kind of remote server and employee access are planned and administered. More detailed information can be obtained IT consultants and Managed IT service providers for in depth knowledge and installation support.

More information can also be found by contacting Solnet Canada at consulting@solnetcanada.com or communicating through website chat portal directly at www.solnetcanada.com