As I write this blog post, I’m sitting in a downtown Wellington Cafe. The concept of “working remotely” – or Teleworking – call it what you will, isn’t a new concept to information workers, particularly if you’re working in the tech sector. Most workers nowdays have remote access to email as a given. What is new is the complete functionality, ease of use, and cost (or lack thereof) of working from home or a cafe. Now your boss can expect you to do more than just check your email! Technology is now at a point where anyone can do almost anything from a laptop or PC at home, in a cafe, an airport lounge or anywhere else for that matter with internet access. Getting the latest P & L from out of our accounting package, checking emails, or updating our customer database can now work from home just as if we’re sitting at our desk at work. If something is web-based, chances are you can do that already. But what about a system that’s not on the web? “What are the possibilities now then?” you ask… I’m happy to share a couple with you.
One might think that the opportunity to continue ones job while sipping a Moccha and eating a slice is cross purpose – we get out of the office leaving our work behind to go grab a coffee and have a natter with a friend – but for some of us there are real efficiencies to gain. If you’re at home on the weekend and think “oh that’s where that transaction should have been allocated to” then you don’t really want to spend 15mins or more driving into work just for a 5min job, do you? With the right set up, you can log in to your PC screen at work, open your accounting package, fix the transaction, then close out all in 5 mins. So you’ve saved yourself 30 mins of your Saturday and are glad that you’ve crossed that niggly item off your to do list.
What if you were considering finishing maternity leave early and returning to work for half a day, but live 45 mins out of the office and can’t bear the morning traffic 5 days a week? Well, why not consider “teleworking” a couple (or more) days each week? If you have a home PC (with Windows or Mac it doesn’t really matter anymore) then you can do almost anything. Being able to do spread sheeting, CRM, print documents to the work or the home printer, access shared files and a multitude of other functions are now available to you via your work PC or server will get you by. You might get a little bit more work done too you never know.
Or how about sitting in an airport lounge, wanting to catch up on forecasts and current month’s earnings? Same situation, whether you’re operating from a temporary base or from somewhere like home. Remote access is becoming more and more prevalent. Technology to enable it is built into most inexpensive small business IT solutions now, so chances are you just need a knowledgeable IT team to set it up. From email access through to your CRM program, if it’s not on the web just access your desktop. And hey you don’t need to leave your computer on anymore either. If you’re conscious of the environment (or your power bill) remote “wake up” is available.
If you think your business could work smarter using remote access, Rhythm IT can help. Save yourself the 30mins on Saturday morning by giving us a call and discussing what you’d like to access. We can come up with a solution for you.
