The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s decision to implement lockdown, as a result, has seen a huge shift towards remote working.

Where before businesses might find one or two members of staff might work from home on the odd Wednesday, today, businesses all over the country, have been forced to deal with a changed environment.

Not only do more people want to work from home, many must.

We don’t know if this upward trend in remote working will continue for years to come, or if it will slow as more and more elements of the lockdown are eased…

But for any businesses struggling to adapt to remote working right now, it’s poses a real challenge.

Sure, working from home might be straightforward for many, for some, understanding and navigating the unfamiliar technologies can be difficult.

This, in turn, causes problems for your business.

The good news is, for many years, here at Protech Comms, we’ve been helping our clients to put remote working systems in place and have a huge amount of experience in the area.

We can not only help install and set up the systems and software you need, we can provide training and support on how to use them.

It means any member of staff who needs to work from home is confident and comfortable in doing so.

To talk about how we could help you make your business more adaptable to remote working, you can call us direct on 01205 205250 or email to [email protected].

But we know some readers might be less experienced with all the different software tools available to help you work more effectively from home.

So, we wanted to share five pieces of software that could come in handy…

Five pieces of software to help make working from home that bit easier

• ZOOM (https://zoom.us/): Chances are you’ve been invited at some point over the last few weeks to attend a Zoom call. Long before the lockdown, businesses have been using Zoom as one of the preferred video conferencing tools. It’s simple to use, has the capacity for video and audio and you’re able to record too. There are some restrictions on the free to use version, but for quick meetings and catch ups face-to-face, it’s a pretty reliable tool. Of course, it might be there are better video conferencing options available for your business, which we can explore together based on your specific needs.

• TRELLO (https://www.trello.com) – There are a huge amount of different work-flow tools out there on the internet, such as Asana, Monday and Basecamp, and finding which one works best for your business will depend on how your current work-flows are set up. But Trello is a particularly flexible one with a huge amount of functionality that can be easily adopted to suit different businesses. Work can be scheduled, assigned to different team members and prioritised so people can see what needs doing first. Plus, projects are easily moveable, and the usability is particularly smooth. It’s one to explore.

• MICROSOFT ONEDRIVE (https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/onedrive/online-cloud-storage) – Free and easy to use, OneDrive not only lets you share documents between people, but you’re also able to edit and comment too. The Microsoft office range of online apps are all useful and you’ll find many other businesses have begun to share documents and work this way. So, it’s good to have a basic understanding of the software even if you don’t use it very often in your own business.

• MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT (https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/sharepoint/collaboration) – For file transfers and sharing documents, one of the best platforms we find to use is Sharepoint. Where other file transferring platforms are pretty limited to a basic transfer, Sharepoint lets you create specific areas for specific projects where you can share not only files, but other information resources that might be useful for the people you’re sharing with.

• MICROSOFT TEAMS (https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software) – Teams is an increasingly popular alternative to email and with more and more people needing to communicate from home, it could be something you find useful for your business. It is essentially a series of message boards, but is structured much like email, where you can start a thread with a single member of the team or ‘cc’ others in so everyone can see an ongoing conversation. If cluttered inboxes are a problem for your business, shifting your communication over to Teams could be a big help.

Building the right working from home infrastructure for your business

Of course, your business will have many different needs to the next and when it comes to setting up the right infrastructure for remote working, there’ll be many factors to consider.

All the tools we’ve mentioned here are useful, easy to use and have free versions available. But at the same time, they do have natural limitations, and, with the use of any public software, you’ve always got to be careful around security issues.

(Remember to check our blog on cybersecurity here.)

Depending on the needs of your business, it might be you require something more robust setting up.

The good news is, here at Protech Comms, we will figure this all out for you.

We will assess your current situation and set up…

We will recommend what needs implementing…

We will install, maintain and monitor everything for you…

And we will always keep you in the loop about new technologies, which might help improve your business processes.

So, to find out more and see how we can support your IT needs in so many other ways, get in touch.

You can call direct or email direct on 01205 205250 and [email protected] or you can just hit the button below.