WorldWide Impact

In light of recent events, COVID-19 or Corona virus has financially impacted every single industry on the planet. Sectors from education, finance, retail and even entertainment have been affected by the Corona Virus outbreak. Organizations both big and small have been postponing, even cancelling, events in order to mitigate the potential spread of the virus. With the virus’ high infection rate, every organization is taking precautions to assist during this time.

Financial Business Impact

The result of the recent events have caused businesses to shut down offices. At a glance, the NBA’s decision to postpone the season could end up costing the league hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue and travel and airline industries are losing revenue due to ghost planes. These decisions have a trickling effect, and small to mid-size business owners are starting to feel the adverse effects. As owners and decision makers start sending out the message to tell their employees to stay at home, productivity and revenue will be impacted first. Business owners who must have physical presence to conduct business will feel most of the impact, but those who can conduct business remotely can mitigate the damage.

Remote Work Strategy

Many companies have mandated a work from home over the next 2-4 weeks to ensure the health and safety of their employees. While working from home is adopted fairly well in some businesses, it is not necessarily the culture in others. Many businesses have not thought of building a remote work strategy for their company and are now looking for ways to enable their employees to be successful and productive during this time. There are many ways to enable your workers to be as effective at home as they are in the office.

VPN / Remote Control

In today’s society, a majority of the common household has a decent connectivity to the outside world. While most companies run cloud or hosted based applications, some companies require the access of local resources in order to function. One way of allowing workers to be virtually in the office is to enable a Client VPN and have the employees be able to access their corporate resources from their PC at home. Another way is to allow a Client VPN to be able to then allow a Remote Control session to takeover their computer in the office. This makes it seem like the employee is sitting at his actual computer but from home.

Unified Communications

Quick means of communication like phones or Instant Messaging can promote higher productivity. Fortunately, with the advancements in Hosted Phones and Unified Communications, companies are taking advantage of this technology to enable their remote workers to be as effective in the field as they are in the office. Hosted Phones with Mobility allows you to take your Office Extension on the go. You can make or receive calls direct to your office line right from your phone or computer.

Cyber Security

Lastly, cyber security is something that needs to be well thought of when deploying a remote work strategy. While not having a remote work strategy can contribute to a loss of revenue, so can a poorly implemented one. Breaches cause unnecessary pains and financial loss for any business and most of the time the breaches are not a result of hacking your firewall, but social-hacking your employees. Having a proper Employee Training Plan to identify and act on Spam and Phishing attempts can have a huge impact on your security posture. Everyone properly equips themselves with the best firewall, but no one thinks to equip their employees with the proper training.

Zeg Solutions has been helping businesses create these strategies to get them to where they need to be. Contact us today if you need any assistance.