The way people work has evolved. Employees expect businesses to provide access to the right tools to be able to work remotely, at any time, on just about every device that you can imagine. According to IDC, 72% of employees will be working remotely by 2020.

And with the outbreak of Coronavirus, it’s become more critical than ever for businesses to be able to support remote working for their employees along with the ability to seamlessly and instantly collaborate with their teams and customers.

Like most businesses, if you have remote employees or plan to implement a Work from Home (WFH) program, Evolve IP has put a Work From Home Checklist together to enable business continuity.

In the meantime, in this blog post series, we’ll discuss the top things that you need to start thinking about to implement a remote working plan:

Implement A Robust Work From Home Platform

The key items to address from a technology perspective are the ability for employees to collaborate with their teams and customers using a single platform along with the ability to access all the tools and business applications that they would need to get their work done. Here are some specific suggestions to consider when determining the right technology platform for your employees:

Virtual Workspaces - Identity and Access Management, Desktop as a Service and More

Control SaaS Applications - Enable an IAM solution with a SSO portal so users will need only one set of credentials. Ide- ally, multi-factor authentication can be added into this offering to enhance security even further. Check if your solution will be hosted in HIPAA / HITRUST, PCI and SOC compliant data centers as necessary.

Help your helpdesk – Some estimates have a single password reset costing upwards of $70 per incident. Lots of remote workers in new environments may tax your help desk more than ever. An IAM / SSO solution will be a big help here.

Legacy Applications and Virtual Desktops – Depending on your users you may have individuals that need access to ap- plications that are hosted on premises. Others may need a full desktop experience to do their jobs. Get a list of user types together and determine needs for hardware such as thin / zero clients.

Team Collaboration -

• Do your employees use multiple/different collaboration systems today? If yes, have you considered adopting a single collaboration solution such as Microsoft Teams, Cisco UC etc.?
• What are the ‘must-have’ features for your collaboration solution? Here are the top few that we’ve seen customers typically choose to support their remote workforce:
  • Collaborative, persistent chat with your team members
  • File sharing and group editing simultaneously from anywhere in the world
  • Multi party audio and video calling for a more personalized meeting experience
  • Remote, mobile and guest conferencing with internal and external workforce
  • Presence to learn if your remote associates are available for a quick conversation
  • Workstreams comprising of direct messaging channels to collaborate with Teams
• Does your phone / communications system integrate with your collaboration software for a seamless experience? If not, then that’s where the market is headed.
• What are the ‘must-have’ features for your phone system? Here are the top few that we’ve seen customers typically choose to support their remote workforce:
  • Call recording
  • Receptionist Applications
  • Contact Center Features such as wallboard/dashboard, IVR, Callbacks, Surveys, Speech Analytics, etc.
  • CRM Integrations
  • Calling, number porting, global presence
  • Supporting Handsets
  • Miscellaneous UCaaS features
  • Administration portal to configure and manage telephony, voicemail, call center & conferencing functions O Are your employees phone calls / agents customer calls being recorded?
• Do you have a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy? If not, and employees don’t have a work laptop to bring home, it’s a great time to investigate one.
• How will your employees access applications hosted on-premises?
• Will you remotely support the at-home equipment? Will your existing Support hours suffice?
• Where are the support boundaries drawn for personal equipment? Is this solely the employee’s responsibility?

Click here to download our entire Work From Home Checklist to ensure business continuity during the Coronavirus outbreak.