Making the choice to work from home in the spring of 2019 probably wouldn’t have been a big deal, so long as your boss approved the decision and you could still get everything done. Yet when the coronavirus pandemic started in the spring of 2020, many people were forced to work from home. Some companies were prepared to make the change, while others had to scramble to develop a process to make the switch. At 415 Group, we were able to easily pivot not only for our team, but also for our clients who rely on our Managed IT services.
Our IT department has always understood the importance of standardizing our Technology Standards and workflow. We manage more than 3,000 desktops for our clients and field support tickets for a variety of issues. When the pandemic began in the United States and people shifted to working from home, we realized just how much of an impact our previous work would have on getting clients ready to work from their homes.
After Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced a “stay at home” order in late March, many non-essential businesses had to temporarily close their offices. Most of our clients fell into this category, so they immediately needed a way to do their work from home. This order entered us into a period of non-stop processing of work-from-home requests.
Before the spread of COVID-19, we had deployed a uniform tech stack to all our clients as part of our Managed IT Services. This standardization of technology paid dividends for the client as we began to process hundreds of requests for Working From Home (WFH).
We used a VPN – the most secure remote access method – for our clients. With the necessary equipment already in place at clients’ offices due to standardization, our team was able to quickly and effectively process hundreds of WFH requests as our entire team of nearly 20 techs was already trained and familiar with the needed VPN setup. Workers simply went home and allowed us to remote to their home PC with our tools to set up their personal VPN access to the office.
Given our team also found themselves in a WFH environment, we found it ironic that we were working from home while remoting to the client’s home to get them access to the office. We were all in the same situation.
Not all businesses though were “non-essential”; many clients were still open and needing support. However, with an extremely contagious virus going around, we had to handle 100% of the requests remotely, as an IT Tech is – for example – always touching other people’s keyboards and mice. Often times, we simply delivered a PC to a business or house and asked the client to carry the hardware into its environment. Then, we remoted into it and completed our tasks. This was not an ideal procedure, but we appreciate our clients’ flexibility.
In the past month and a half, we set up hundreds of computers so people could work from home. I’m proud of our team for being prepared and getting through it in such an efficient way. We’re all hoping that life can start to go back to normal soon, but we’ll keep finding ways to help our clients in their own work-from-home situations for as long as necessary.
If you are in need of IT services, reach out to us today to find out how we can help your business during this time and beyond.
