Thanks to globalisation and cutting edge technologies, more and more businesses are opening a new breed of offices.Alongside this, more and more workers are working in a different point in the central office. In fact, more than 65 percent of people in large companies are in a venue away from the main building. This happens more and more as businesses increase in number worldwide. Although these sites are sometimes called remote offices in the world of networking, they should not be considered "remote". Instead, each should operate as its own separate headquarters. So how is it best to go about implementing a successful remote office?
Communication
Communication with employees should happen in a transparent manner as if they were actually just next door, and the information should be passed reliably and accurately, regardless of where the office is located. Therefore, this leads to all offices being connected to the central office in an efficient and stable manner. If there is a poor interconnection between headquarters and these remote offices, information will be poor and with many technical problems. An example would be if each office had different types of software and hardware, or if the tools are not properly updated. This could cause problems of having a greater maintenance cost, as well as lost productivity, due to the incompatibility of the computers and network problems.
Technology
If the technology is not optimally integrated, a company may also have trouble recovering from system failures that can pose big difficulties for the remote host. Many of these remote offices do not have their own technical support team, which could take care of these problems. Fortunately there are many tools to help the integration of these remote offices to a central location, no matter how big the businesses are.Every company has its own technical needs. These needs make a big difference on exactly what it takes to integrate these remote offices. There are some universal steps that any business can continue during the process: Assess needs, seek help from IT experts, update and improve technology based on expert recommendations, and ultimately ensure security and centralised data storage. When you are assessing the needs of the company, first ask employees that have problems accessing this. This will help identify the specific problems of the remote site. Once you have the general idea of improvement, it is time to enlist the help of a technical consultation or IT support that will show the strengths and weaknesses in the integration plan.
Upgrade
With this information in mind, you can begin to upgrade and improve systems, allowing the business to operate more smoothly. Updating and optimising the network will be one of the points in the process. You can also consider adding new technologies like VoIP systems and video conferencing to bring even more communication to your remote office. The voIP or voice over IP, can make and receive calls from anywhere within the company. For example, a receptionist at a remote site can receive a call and transfer it to another person, even to someone who is in another office or at home. This is done transparently to all, which makes this conversation perfect for a new or growing company. The same goes for video conferencing, which delivers good visibility between sites.
Data Check
The last step to integrating a remote office is to ensure all data is stored correctly. Maybe one of the biggest mistakes a company can make when it deploys remote offices is to allow the data to propagate unchecked by all the offices, rather than centralise it, where it can be shared, stored and insured by backups. In the worst case, the propagated data is unchecked, potentially leading to a problem for the business in case of a large glitch. Instead of keeping important data stored in computers and servers in each of the offices, a more integrated solution is to group and store the data on a central server in a given site.Servers do not have to be in the same building where the main office is, but perhaps in other facilities. The important part is that technical support group need only ensure, maintain and create backups to a single location. Employees working in the same building, can access their own data using the LAN locally or via Wi-Fi. In remote offices, employees can access their data through systems like Terminal Server, which allows users to connect remotely to other systems as if they were in the same place. Another important tool is the use of VPN, which allows employees to access and retrieve data from outside the office while the communication between the computer and the central server remains safe.
