As a paid consultant it’s not in my nature to give away free advice, however…
…we find ourselves in unusual times and pulling together is how we’ll get through this challenge. My primary objective is to offer help in the spirit of community...
As an independent communications consultant, with over 30 years of experience helping organisations optimise their communications infrastructure and save money, I see all the vendors’ solutions. From the big known brands like Cisco, to the smaller independent start-ups with their often better technology (which is why they usually end up getting acquired).
I’ve heard all the pitches and for many years the talk of home-working whilst collaborating as if you were with your workmates has been well worn! But today, more than any other day it is so relevant. With people all over the world being sent home, told not to travel, then self isolate, how does the world, your world, still function and remain financially buoyant?
For decades I have studied, used and dismissed many collaborative products and software; many with insufficient applications and just as many with high price tickets that made them irrelevant.
Here we are with countries on lock down, businesses coming to a standstill, essential services halted and education (at exam period) stalling.
For any business or service where we have to communicate with groups on a daily basis, education, training, home visits and the like, what do we do?
One Solution is to Find an Easy to Use, Free (or at least inexpensive) But Proven Method of Continuous Communication.
BUT, if you’re not sure what to do next, here’s some questions to ask yourself about remote working and collaboration. These will help make adopting the right tools for you organisation, a little easier…
- Do you need to access documentation? The firewalls and security measures put in place over the years to protect your business, may now be a problem if you run a collaboration solution on internal servers, compared to cloud-based solutions. If your staff need to access documents remotely, this can be a major technical barrier to implementation.
- Do you have a enough bandwidth? Within your company or organisation, ensure there is adequate bandwidth for people to efficiently use services like video conferencing. If you don’t, frustration and problems will arise.
- Are you in the education sector or a non-profit organisation? Did you know there are telecoms companies offering free collaboration tools throughout this global challenge?
- Checking you have adequate bandwidth is one thing, but do the people you want to communicate with have access to enough bandwidth/data? To successfully meet via video and to collaborate remotely, all parties need to have the right infrastructure or a least a tool that works extremely well with these unknown variables.
- Are you a government body, can you keep working, keep connected and continue to deliver important services? As a councillor for local government, my experience would point to the fact that the answer is… NO!
- Is video conferencing important for face to face meetings, tutoring, if so can you also share documents and relevant information in a collaborative and meaningful way?
ALL Schools, Charities and Not For Profit Organisations, Get Your FREE Collaborative Software From One of the Worlds Better Known Telecoms Product Providers!
There’s a lot to think about, but with the imminent shut down of everything, you must act fast. Answers are an email or call away, contact me now on 0113 5125999…
…LET ME HELP! Submit Your Details Below