Moving Your Business to Work from Home

Nathan Whittacre

In an effort to provide a quick reference for businesses to keep their doors open while on government mandated quarantine, we are providing this quick reference of resources that can assist you to navigate these uncertain times. This isn’t a comprehensive guide but will provide some links to products that can assist you to put in place the right technology to get working again.

Don’t do this:

Don’t fall victim to cyber-crime, spam or other emails that are related to COVID-19. I think all of us are tired of receiving emails from every company that has our e-mail address about how they are handling the crisis. Mixed in with those emails are hackers sending out emails, including some that appear to be from the CDC. It is important to be extra vigilant to look out for fraud.

  • Have a talk with your staff about the possibility of fraud, especially with wire fraud.
  • Have a plan to handle ACH, Wires and other payments that require 2-factor communication. Don’t allow payments to go out just from an email.

Don’t allow your employees to use home PC’s or other personal devices without proper security. If your employee’s home PC isn’t fully protected, it could potentially infect your office network. If you are going to allow them to use their device, make sure it is fully onboarded to company policies.

  • We can help onboard your employee’s home PCs to your same security plan that you have with Stimulus for security.

Do this:

Allow employees to work from home. There are several ways that we are recommending you do this:

Use Remote Desktop (RDP) to access an RDP server or their desktop at the office. Some of our clients have these already setup and ready to go. If you don’t have that already, it requires some licensing and possible hardware to be purchased. This may not be the fastest options to get your employees working remotely if you don’t have installed already.

  • Virtual Private Network (VPN) access to office infrastructure. For those that SonicWall firewalls or other enhanced firewalls allow remote users to connect directly to the office network to access resources. You may need to add licenses to your device to allow access. We can get the licenses loaded up quickly so they can start working.
  • Use Connectwise Control. For those that need quick implementation of remote users, we have a tool that you can use. Because of high demand, we are only offering this to 15 employees per client. Licensing per user will be $10/month.

Start or finish moving to the cloud. Many applications and software have cloud options. We can discuss with you about specific options for your line-of-business applications.

Use Office 365 to its fullest.

  • Do you know about Microsoft Teams? It is one of the fastest growing applications Microsoft has ever released. It is a great way to communicate quickly with your team. It allows for video conferencing, chat, file sharing and collaboration. Get your employees’ webcams (we can help with that) and allow them to communicate with each other easily. They can also install it on Android and iPhones.
  • Use One Drive to share files. Each Office 365 has 1TB worth of storage. It is easy to upload files to One Drive and share with each other.
  • You can access Office 365 through a web browser. Go to https://portal.office.com to access it from any PC.

Keep your sales team productive while they are at home.

  • Use web conferencing systems like Zoom or GoToMeeting. We have moved all our meetings to Zoom starting last week rather than meeting in person. I think these meetings can be just as effective as in-person meetings.
  • Hold webinars and conferences online. With all meetings pretty much cancelled, you can still hold the meetings online. Make sure you have the right product from Zoom or GoToMeeting to make sure you can have enough attendees for those meetings.

Use or switch to VoIP.

  • Most VoIP providers allow for soft-phones or move your hardware phones to home. That way, you can still take calls from home.
  • Give your employees the ability to still be human.
  • https://bonus.ly/ allows for employees to give each other micro-bonuses for doing a great job or helping each other out. It is a way to allow everyone to still pat each other on the back – at a very safe distance.

Things to keep in mind:

 We’re overwhelmed with requests right now for working remotely. We are focused on helping our clients keep their employees productive. Feel free to contact us and we will get with you as soon as possible.

There is financial assistance available. The SBA is offering up to $2,000,000 in low interest, long term disaster assistance. Visit https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/disaster-assistance for more information.

Provide leadership and communicate. I think it is essential for you as a business leader to stay strong in these difficult times. The more you communicate to your employees about stability of your company, the better you will be.

Feel free to reach out to us for any questions or help to set up any of these systems: (855) 564-3166 or visit www.stimulustech.com.

We are here to help you succeed!

Nathan Whittacre is CEO of Stimulus Technologies.

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