Is Your Business Ready for Coronavirus Lockdown? • Blisstech Solutions

With the COVID-19 coronavirus continuing to spread in the UK, and Italy and China placing lockdowns on their towns and cities, it seems likely that the UK will follow suit if the outbreak continues apace.  Experts have stated today that the spread of the virus in the UK is around 2 weeks behind Italy.  So it is likely that, in two weeks’ time, the UK could also be on lockdown. If employees are prevented from gathering, effectively being homebound, this is a worrying time for businesses.  However, many businesses can significantly mitigate the impact of a coronavirus lockdown by providing tools that allow employees to work more effectively from home.

What tools do you need?

Most desk-based workers will need a productivity suite, email, and a communication and collaboration platform. If you are not familiar with communication and collaboration platforms, they are applications that allow teams to share information, chat, collaborate and attend meetings.

a home working desk setup

Examples are Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts and Slack. These platforms allow your employees to work as if they were working in the same office enabling real-time collaboration.

Other applications that may be required are essential line of business (LOB) applications, and possibly, access to shared files.

What can you do?

So what exactly can you do to enable your employees to work from home?

Email

Email is easy as it has been possible to get email remotely for years. Most email is cloud-based, and even on-premise systems have the facility to connect remotely. If you don’t have this capability, look at something like Office 365 (Exchange Online) or Google G-Suite. There are many providers out there that offer cheaper email services. However, you get what you pay for and most of these are very basic.  I believe there is nothing available on the market today as good as the Google or Microsoft offerings.

Productivity Suite

If you are a Google G Suite customer you will get an online word processor, spreadsheet, presentation app. If you are an Office 365 customer you can use the web-based versions of Word, Excel & PowerPoint or install a copy of Microsoft Office on five computers per user.   This means you don’t need to give your employees a computer to work from home; they can work perfectly well on the home computer.

Collaboration Tools

a woman working with a virtual team

Both Microsoft and Google recently announced they will temporarily provide Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts for free because of the coronavirus.  The Microsoft trial is a very generous 6 months for existing Microsoft business customers.  Having spoken to a contact at Microsoft they are genuinely doing this for the greater good to enable businesses to collaborate in the midst of this outbreak.  Microsoft Teams is an incredibly feature-rich collaboration tool, so signing up for this is a no-brainer if you are an eligible customer and do not already have a collaboration tool.

Line of Business Applications

If you have cloud-based line of business applications your users will be able to work remotely in pretty much exactly the same way as they do from the office. However, if the application is installed on a server in your office then you will have to provide a VPN.  A VPN is a secure tunnel that connects directly from a user’s computer to your business.  It is secure, if configured correctly, and provides your employees access to systems within your office.  If the system is a client/server application, users can connect to work PCs using remote desktop and work as they were in the office.  This will prevent the need for users to need to install the software on their home computers, although they will need help setting up the VPN.

Shared Files

If users need access to shared files in your office, you can use the VPN method to access them.  However, mapping drives from a home computer to a business server would not be recommended.  Without expensive systems in place, you cannot verify the security of computers you don’t control!  If users require access to shared files, it is best to provide a computer with your security software installed.  Or move to a cloud-based file storage solution.  Both Google G Suite and Microsoft Office 365 provide cloud file storage solutions that are worth checking out. These are called File Stream and Shared Drives for Google and OneDrive and SharePoint for Microsoft.

I hope this article helps you to understand how you can get prepared for any kind of lockdown that may be imposed because of the COVID-19 coronavirus.  If you want to learn how we can help you prepare, please get in touch.

More Content

How to plan a big IT project

We all dream of making changes to our business that will make us more efficient and profitable, but significant changes to the technology you use to run your business should never be rushed.

PING, WHOOSH, or BEEP? Now you can decide with Teams

PING, WHOOSH, or BEEP? Now you can decide with Teams

Is the sound of yet another Teams notification about to drive you crazy? A new update will put a stop to that… and it’ll help you prioritize your tasks too. We have all the details here.

Are you ready for next-gen email security? (YES!)

Are you ready for next-gen email security? (YES!)

Sick of spam emails? We have details of a cool new tool to help keep us better protected.

New phishing scam is smarter than ever… here’s how to protect your business

New Microsoft 365 phishing scam is smarter than ever… here’s how to protect your business

Microsoft is warning business owners that trusted cloud storage services are being hijacked to trick you into handing over your data. Here we tell you what you need to know.

Tech Tip: How to managed Focused and Junk email in Outlook

Welcome to a new Tuesday Two Minute Tech Tip that will help you to manage what you see in your Inbox. Are you wondering where your emails have gone? Is something you expect to see in your Inbox not arriving anymore? This video will show you how to:    👉...

Tech Tip: Send quick Teams messages from anywhere

We all know that Teams messaging is a great way to communicate with others, but it can be disruptive if it interrupts our flow. Even though Teams messaging is a great way to communicate with colleagues, it can easily break your concentration and flow. You might find...
The little things that make a big difference

The little things that make a big difference

Microsoft’s made another update to Windows 11, and while it’s a small one, it could make a big impact. We have all the details of what’s changing.

Are you using Teams to share sensitive data?

Microsoft Teams has fast become one of THE most useful business tools for the way we work today. No matter where your people work from, they can communicate and collaborate quickly and reliably. But this remote way of working can also open the door to some MAJOR security issues. New research shows that nearly HALF of employees frequently share confidential …

Now AI can make your Teams meetings more productive

Microsoft Teams Meeting Recap will summarise your meetings and even make a list of the action points. We show you its other benefits

Are your productivity tools actually slowing you down?

If productivity tools aren’t embedded properly within your business, tasks can actually end up taking longer than they should.

Share This
Contact
Love Lane
Cleobury Mortimer
Shropshire DY14 8PE

01299 382 321
[email protected]
Copyright © 2024 Blisstech Solution Ltd
Registered No: 08125391 VAT No : 307 5490 05