Nicole Georgiou
Whilst many businesses in today’s world are geared up for their workforce to work remotely, most will not anticipate the whole company working off-site at the same time. Therefore, a lot of companies are now being put to the test with the government advising all businesses that can work from home, to do so during the recent COVID-19 outbreak.
Whether it’s issues with Virtual Private Networks (VPN), ensuring that every single person has a mobile workstation, or poor internet connections, most businesses are bound to be experiencing problems with their everyday operations.
Business continuity is one thing, but another key element which could impact businesses is communication and access to information:
Office Chat
When we’re in the office, it’s easy to get up and go speak to colleagues to get an issue resolved or information you need instantly. Whilst working remotely however, the person you need to get hold of may be on other calls as more people are calling them whilst being remote, resulting in your issue or that bit of information you need being delayed.
Whilst in the office, most people sit within their teams and near other teams, so you can often listen to what other people are talking about and jump in to help them or learn from them. When working from home however, that physicality is lost.
Access to information
When working remotely, most people will struggle to get into a routine or have kids to look after so may not always be at their desk or working slightly different hours. Whilst this is not an issue if the work they need to do is still getting done, what happens if there is urgent information required from either a customer or a colleague that only that person has access to but is not available to provide it at that moment in time?
Internet Connection
Or what happens when you lose access to your company’s information due to a poor internet connection or because too many people are trying to access this information at the same time, preventing you from logging onto the Virtual Private Network or similar platform?
Storage Capacities
As the option to go and have a chat with your colleague in person has now been removed, most people are reverting to email to communicate. How long until your mailbox is full? And how easy is the vast volume of emails you are now receiving to manage?
Excitech Mail is an email management system designed to provide visibility across projects. It’s a simple plugin for Outlook that doesn’t need to be installed on a server. It provides offline access to your emails, allows you to file emails to your preferred storage and find information instantaneously.
Learn more here.
Autodesk BIM 360 is a design to construction management platform that make it easier for designers, and anyone working with drawings to work from anywhere, anytime and access all project models and files for which you have permission.
Learn more here.
We hope this has given you some insight as to how you can stay in the know whilst working from home. Please do not hesitate to contact us on 0345 370 1444 or email us at info@symetri.co.uk should you need any further information.
For guidance on accessing or working with CAD/Drawing formats, please read our blog post "Support Revit Homeworking & Business Continuity."
For guidance on working from home with your current licensing deployment, please read our blog post "Autodesk Licensing and Working from Home."
For guidance on the impact of remote working on your critical IT infrastructure, please read our blog post "Ensuring your Business Continuity during the Current Coronavirus (COVI19) Outbreak."
For guidance on working with Vault from home, please read our blog post "Working with Vault Remotely".
For guidance on working with external teams remotely, please read our blog post "Working with External Teams Remotely".
For guidance on working with Inventor from home, please read our blog post "Working with Internal Teams Remotely - Inventor."
