How to work from home has become a relevant concern for many people over time, as more employers embrace telecommuting. Adjusting to WFH can be difficult at first, though, due to the different work environments and possible challenges in focus and time management.
These same potential problems extend to running an entire business remotely. Whether you started your company from your mobile device or were forced to manage it from home/on the go, there are some obvious limitations in trying to connect with customers, business partners, and colleagues with only minimal (if any) in-person contact.
Still, it’s possible to succeed with this approach. Let’s explore some practical tips for going fully remote.
1. Use video conferencing technology
Video conferencing services provide unique benefits in connecting people regardless of their physical locations:
- Conference attendees get to see each other, which can help build stronger connections than audio conferencing by itself.
- Video solutions also help with focus. Participants are less likely to multitask on a video call than on an audio one, which can lead to more productive meetings.
- A live video feed can also be useful for conducting certain types of demonstrations or presentations.
- Video is very cost-effective while still being feature-rich. A video meeting can also be interspersed with a screen share or messaging for versatile real-time collaboration.
Overall, a video conferencing platform can keep remote participants highly engaged and also greatly reduce any costs you might have otherwise incurred from travel and face-to-face meetups.
2. Connect with VoIP instead of regular phone calls
VoIP telephony has long provided higher call quality than calls made over the public switched telephone network. But that’s just the beginning of the benefits for a business owner who needs to run everything remotely.
More specifically, a hosted VoIP implementation is relatively simple to manage, highly scalable, and built for working out of the office and on the go. Hosted VoIP can provide:
- A straightforward administrator console for handling all moves, adds, and changes.
- Integration with popular business applications such as Microsoft Outlook.
- Backend infrastructure that’s fully managed by the VoIP service provider.
- Audio conferencing with a convenient web interface complete with meeting controls.
- High-reliability thanks to geo-redundant data centers and failover.
- Much lower costs than a traditional private branch exchange.
- The ability to utilize Unified Communications applications such as Telesystem UC-One for voice, video, chat, screen sharing and conferencing.
3. Invest in the right security solutions and services
When you run your business from your smartphone or tablet, there are some important steps to take to ensure that your activities are as secure as possible.
First, a reliable virtual private network (VPN) service is essential for encrypting your connection. A VPN is also important if you need to access applications that are hosted in a company office or data center that you can’t currently visit or access.
You’ll also want to make sure that the providers of key hosted or managed services (e.g., hosted VoIP) are operating secure data centers. Certifications such as SOC 2 Type II demonstrate competence on this front.
To protect your online presence, anti-DDoS protection is important. Telesystem provides this service, which prevents disruptive and reputation-harming DDoS attacks, at no additional cost, for all services passing through our network core.
4. Keep your devices and network infrastructure up-to-date
The actual device(s) you use to run your business should be relatively new, if possible - not just for purposes of performance and functionality, but also because they’re easier to secure.
Recent devices will be eligible for all applicable software updates and patches, unlike older ones that may have fallen out of support already.
The same general principle holds for network equipment such as routers and switches. For example, a router that supports WPA3 authentication is going to be safer overall than one that can’t go beyond WPA2, which has some known exploits.
To learn more about running your business on the go with the best available collaboration and security services, connect with the Telesystem today.
