Facts
Ensuring that your staff are properly supported when on site
You need your staff to be secure and productive when working on site. The greatest enabler is your information technology infrastructure:
Workstations must be reliable – the choice of equipment should be informed by practical experience.
Using the cloud for document storage can be effective for site offices if internet connectivity is reliable.
Commercial grade photocopiers are tough and can be remotely managed. We have found them to be a good solution for site office printing and scanning. Velvet Systems regularly ships photocopiers to site offices on short-term lease.
A connectivity solution at the site office location that has the right bandwidth and reliability will be required. This can be difficult and getting it right often requires specialist knowledge.
The connectivity at your office (the other end of the link to the site office) must be robust with high availability. Redundant connections may be required for reliability. Upgrades may be necessary to allow enough concurrent remote users.
Because it may not be easy to send a technician to a site office the ability to monitor and manage everything remotely is essential. Domestic equipment should never be used. Routers and other network equipment, firewalls, workstations, and photocopiers should all have remote management and monitoring capability.
The security of your main office infrastructure and remote equipment must be managed – all security patches and operating systems must be up to date, managed commercial anti-virus installed, etc.
All site office infrastructure should be regularly backed up in case of failure.
Installation of a UPS should be considered.
Help-desk support will be needed for your remote staff – the required technical skills and experience to get your staff working again when the inevitable issues occur.
Supporting site offices is one of Velvet Systems’ original service offerings and we have been refining and evolving our capability for the last 20 years.
Site Office It Assessment
Your systems and data are more vulnerable at remote locations:
- Can you be sure that the workstation security patches and operating system patches are up to date?
- How is authentication managed? Do your applications appropriately manage security for remote users?
- How do you ensure only your staff members have access to your systems and data when your workstation may be physically accessible by others?
- How are your site office workstations protected in the event of theft? If a workstation is lost, can you be sure that the access is controlled and the data is unavailable to the thief?
- How is the site office network secured?
Some key questions to consider about productivity at your site office:
- How do you ensure that remote access to your data is fast enough for your staff to be productive? Nothing destroys productivity faster than staff sitting waiting for screens to update. Many solutions are available… from using different connectivity to using accelerators like Riverbed devices.
- How do you ensure that staff have access to all the systems and data that they need to do their jobs? Some services and data may only be available at your main office unless technology to support remote access is installed, e.g. Citrix, VPN, RDP, etc.
- How to best use the available technology to ensure your staff keeps functioning as a team? Many products will allow your team members to talk to each other, but a lot of available functionality goes unused that would help your staff feel more connected and be more collaborative. Things like configuring SharePoint and associated workflows for easier collaboration. Configuring this additional functionality sometimes requires specialist skills.
Enabling maximum productivity means having the right infrastructure. Velvet Systems can provide you with a no-cost assessment and recommendations for your site office IT.
Get in touch today
We have been helping clients in Brisbane (and beyond) with site offices for over 20 years. Contact us now for expert advice.
