So, here I am, stuck at home following a trip to A&E which confirmed a badly sprained left ankle. Banned from driving until I can carry out an emergency stop without pain, probably a week to ten days… But am I off work sick? No, I’m remote working and am about 90% as productive as if I was in the office because I have a ‘business continuity’ plan in place.

OK, I hear you all saying that I’m a teccie and remote working is all well and good for an IT company but what about my, more traditional, business?

Well yes I’m a teccie and I work in a teccie department but the client I work for (a global petrochemicals firm) isn’t and remote working is available to almost every one of their staff.

They have a number of layers of technology which are probably cost prohibitive to a smaller company but there are a number of free, or low cost alternative which can be used to achieve the same result for the smaller business.  To be productive, being connected to people is probably more important than being connected to technology.

Email

How did we ever cope before email? Once there was just ‘snail mail’. Documents took days to reach people for comment – or hours if you splashed out on a courier. Then there was Fax, but it required the person at the other end to have a fax machine too.

But email can be used for more than just sending documents. Need a meeting transcribed? Download on application for your smart phone, record the whole meeting and email the resulting file to someone like Marion at MCD Virtual Office and she’ll transcribe the meeting and email it back to you in whatever format you need.

Telephone

In the office we use a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone service. I’ve logged on to this remotely and forwarded all calls to my mobile.

If you have a land line with BT then they have a call forwarding function which can forward calls to any number once activated. Alternatively, you can arm yourself with a VoIP phone number from loads of providers and an install of a ‘soft-phone’ on your laptop or home PC, with an appropriate headset this means you can take calls anywhere you can get an internet connection.

Instant Messaging (IM)

Handy for when the telephone might be too intrusive but quicker than email. It lets you know when people are on-line and perhaps available for an immediate response of a quick question.

We use Microsoft Communicator at work, because it’s an internal implementation it’s totally secure. It’s also standard so people only use the one service!

There are loads of messenger services out there, Microsoft Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype etc. To save on having to have loads of different messenger services running so you can connect with all your clients you can use something like eBuddy or Pidgin which communicate with many different IM clients

Remote File Access

When I’m in the office I have access to a multitude of file servers for various different businesses holding thousands of files. When I work remotely, we have a bespoke Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection to allow access to all these servers securely over the internet. It’s just like being in the office, just a bit slower. But, it requires an infrastructure which is probably overkill for a small business.

For small business use there are a number of ways to access files which may be on your office PC. Most require a small program to be running on your office PC to allow access (they also require your office PC to be turned on!). Some like LogMeIn allow remote access to your Office PC and allow you to transfer files between locations. Others, like DropBox, sit on your office PC and monitor certain folders, replicating the contents into the ‘cloud’ and making these available to any number of clients on many different platforms. I can access my DropBox files on my Android smartphone! Another way is to use something like Google Docs. This requires no continually running component but requires you to upload any documents you might want to share and then grant people access.

Meetings

Slightly more difficult – there is the good old telephone, but what if you need to show a presentation or document?

For work we use LiveMeeting – It’s integrated with our email and VoIP phone system but, once again, it requires a bespoke infrastructure setup.

For free, you can use a website like join.me. This allows remote access to your PC by another person, but, you have the option of only allowing others to view your desktop, enabling you to run any presentation or share the view of any relevant document.

For us teccies join.me also allows remote control of user PCs without the need for any software to be installed – great for emergency remote access support!

In summary

Being stuck at home does not mean you need to be unproductive. With a bit of planning and experimentation you can find some technical solutions that, should the worst come to the worst and you get stuck at home for any reason, (including the weather!) you should be able to continue almost as productively as normal.

Don’t get me wrong, as nice as it is once in a while, I’ll be back at the office as soon as I can drive – The big downside of working from home all the time for someone like me is I miss the company. I miss the ‘corridor meetings’ where a lot of unofficial business gets done.

If you would like some help in planning your strategy for when you can’t get into the office, contact Sara who will be only too happy to help you.

Minky is on holiday this week and he really needs a break. Mrs M has told him that if he takes his laptop it will be going in the pool, so we are looking after his business for him for the week. These are just some of the things we are doing to make sure he gets a well deserved rest.

• taking his phone calls for him
• responding to any enquiries from new clients, so that they get a professional first impression
• booking appointments for him ready for when he’s back
• chasing his customers for payment
• sending out a marketing email
• updating his blog

So, while he’s monkeying around on the beach, his business is ticking along without him.

You will always be the best person to run your business, but could we do this for you for a few days so you can recharge your batteries? Just drop us an email…