#1: Communication and Collaboration Solutions

Let’s face facts… you’re going to have to be able to work with your remote workers in order to accomplish what needs to be done, so you need to make sure you have a solution that maintains open lines of communication between you and your staff. All of the solutions that a business should use to enable communications while in-house should also be leveraged by a remote workforce, including email, chat platforms, video conferencing, and Voice over Internet Protocol.

On top of that, your line of business apps and the everyday software your staff needs should be available to remote workers. A prime example of a necessary solution for your remote employees is a file sharing platform that allows your team to work side-by-side on documents and data… whether or not they’re actually side-by-side.

#2: Project Management Tools

Time management is one of the biggest challenges inherent in remote work, so giving your staff direction through project management software can help your remote workers stay on task, while keeping the team as a whole apprised of progress towards a shared goal. In this way, project management solutions can help your team more efficiently reach their objectives - while keeping all members more accountable for what they need to accomplish.

This can be a considerable benefit, especially if an employee is going from a structured office environment to the more laissez-faire arrangement that remote work provides. Looming deadlines, combined with a fluid schedule, have been known to increase work-related stress. A reliable project management solution can return some of the structure to a remote worker’s day, giving them the purpose, they need to accomplish their goals.

#3: Cybersecurity

Any of the benefits of remote work are rendered moot if this remote work leads to a breach or some other security incident. This means that your remote workforce needs to be equipped with the same cybersecurity measures that you should have protecting your business’ on-premise infrastructure.

As a result, you will want to be sure that you’re having your remote workers utilize multi-factor authentication measures, and that their solutions are equipped with fully up-to-date security software. In order to connect back to your business’ network resource, they should also be leveraging virtual private networks to fully ensure your business’ data remains secure while in transit.

In many ways, a password management system would also be classified as a cybersecurity need - especially where remote workers (and thereby, remote access) are involved. 

#4: Time-Tracking Software

Finally, you need to make sure that your remote employees are spending their time effectively, as well as that you are properly reimbursing them for their time. There are many tools to help track how time is being spent while in the office, and these tools work equally as well for remote workers.

Whether you need to track how long a task took for billing and invoicing purposes, you’re trying to optimize your workflows, or you are simply ensuring that your team is being efficient and productive, understanding how time is spent during the workday is crucial. Implementing time-tracking software for remote workers can simplify payroll, allowing you to focus on other pressing business matters.

Coleman Technologies can help you out, by introducing the solutions that will make your remote working strategy far simpler. To learn more about what we can accomplish for you, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Why Use a VPN?
The best way to understand what a virtual private network does, is to have a little background knowledge of why it’s necessary to have one. The easiest way to understand it is to think about accessing your business’ data as a two-lane road. On one side of the road is the traffic moving from your business’ infrastructure toward your device, and on the other side is data moving from your device to your business’ infrastructure. Anyone with the right tools can see the data as it’s being transported from one location to the next, and if the data isn’t protected by the right solutions, it can be stolen while it’s in transit. A VPN makes it much more difficult for hackers to accomplish this feat.

Understanding a VPN
Your average connection should be encrypted to protect the integrity of any data stored on it, and a virtual private network helps by augmenting this practice while out of the office. To aid in protecting your organization’s network connectivity, a virtual private network can encrypt your connection to sensitive data while on a different connection, such as if you’re working from a remote location, or just simply not in the office at the moment. When the data is encrypted, hackers have a harder time stealing the information that’s being sent to and by your devices while out of the office.

To be fair, it’s not that hackers can’t steal the data being sent to or by your devices while using a virtual private network; it’s that the data that hackers do steal is much less useful to them overall. The reason for this is the encryption. If the hacker can’t crack the encryption of the files, the can’t read the data, and, then the data they have just stolen is completely useless to them. Modern encryption methods are virtually impossible to decrypt (at least, the average hacker will spend more time than it’s worth to decrypt the data, making the process far less appealing than it normally would be).

Coleman Technologies can help your business set up the perfect virtual private network for all of its specific needs. Whether you’re out of the office momentarily or for a lengthy amount of time, or if you have remote workers in all corners of the globe, the right virtual private network can keep your data as secure as can be while it’s moving from one location to the next. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.