No one anticipated how the novel Coronavirus could impact businesses in the United States and around the world. Many small business owners never expected that a virus from overseas would not only affect daily operations, but do so for an extended period of time, sending many employees to work from home.
GroupOne was able to help their clients in the transition from a physical work environment to a remote one, helping with the initial set-up and providing support when needed along the way.
Keep reading to learn how we worked closely with our partners and clients to ensure the continuity of business operations in the face of an unprecedented pandemic!
Transitioning to Cloud Services
At the beginning of 2020, many businesses were uncertain about whether they should transition to the cloud, which cloud platform was best for them, and if the cloud was truly secure. As the year and the pandemic progressed, GroupOne was able to help answer these questions.
Transitioning to the cloud gives businesses and employees the accessibility they need in order to work from home. Additionally, this computing resource allows for collaboration on projects, easier communication, and the real-time saving of data.
While cloud technology has been around for a while, business owners came around to the idea after consulting with our team of professionals to learn which platform would work best for them and how to implement it.
Because GroupOne isn’t partnered with a single cloud platform, we are able to analyze a business to see what their internal workflows are, how they use computing resources, and identify the best solution available. Our partners were able to quickly implement the use of cloud computing with minimal problems and only a small learning curve as they adjusted to the change.
The adoption of this technology allowed our partners to continue business operations as normally as possible and know that their data was secure.
Lacking Hardware
Because of the pandemic forcing many employees to work from home, there seemed to be a shortage of everything office-related – from desks and chairs to important items like laptops, computer screens, and routers.
When items such as these are in high demand, the prices usually increase. This can cause businesses to pay more for technology – if these items are even able to be found.
Our clients who choose to lease their hardware from us were able to avoid this problem completely and instead focus on transitioning to remote operations.
Speeding Up and Securing Internet Connections
One of the biggest issues that working remotely can present is internet-related. Many employees will face slow internet connections, spotty service, or the inability to stay connected for an extended period of time. Additionally, security becomes an issue when connections to a workstation or cloud aren’t secure.
We understand that internet access needs to be fast and secure so we work with businesses to find the best possible solutions for this problem. Some of our partners have already given their employees business internet connections; others are considering this choice depending on what the next several months bring.
Our team has helped businesses make these decisions by working closely with local Internet Service Providers to ensure the most cost-effective solutions.
Fast internet is only half the battle – security is the other half.
Because many devices and home internet connections are not secure, we offer our partners continuous monitoring of these networks as well as any business connections that may be used. Additionally, we were able to set up many of our clients with virtual private networks (VPNs) to ensure the secure transmission of data from the employee’s home computer to the cloud.
These two services enabled businesses to ensure that their company and customer data remained secure without being compromised by cyberthreats and attacks.
Hosted Voice over Internet Protocol
When businesses began working remotely, many of them had to move their analog phone service over to an updated Voice over IP (VoIP) service to continue making and taking calls. Our hosted VoIP services allowed this transition to be seamless and allow our partners to continue providing customer service and making sales calls during the height of the Covid pandemic.
GroupOne owns its VoIP infrastructure which means that all support needs can be taken care of quickly without major interruption to business, making this a great solution during remote operations, and after the virus when business operations returns to normal.
Covid-19: A Great Example of Disaster Recovery
Before people realized how real the threat of Covid-19 was and its impact on daily life, many small business owners were resistant to the idea of disaster recovery. Companies who chose to avoid creating a business continuity plan faced difficult repercussions and some had to close their doors.
GroupOne was able to help our partners navigate the new remote working conditions in 2020, providing assistance with transitioning to the cloud, improving connectivity, and offering VoIP and VPN services. We gave our partners the IT support they needed in order to ensure the continuation of operations while quarantine orders were in effect.
Our team is dedicated to finding unique solutions for each one of our partners and is excited to see what the year 2021 will bring in terms of the return to normalcy.
If you’d like to learn more about how our managed services, VoIP, cloud computing, or IT support can help your business with a disaster recovery plan or while actively recovering from a pandemic, contact GroupOne for a consultation and needs analysis.