Cutting business costs

An easy solution for helping you to survive a downturn in business

How about halving your overheads?

NOW is the time for all that IT to actually save you some money?

These days it's called "flexible working", to you and me it's "working from home". It's long been a focus of employment legislation but it's looking like an effective tool for business survival in these hard times.

Have you looked at the way your employees work to see if you really need all that expensive office space?

Would a smaller office (or none at all) save you some money without effecting your business?

Most employees are happy with working from home, sorry flexible working, because of the increased flexibility and lack of travelling. As the business manager you’re happy because you can cut some costs and still run an efficient and successful business.

Remote working is not for everyone and it will depend on the circumstances at home as well as the individual’s job, but would it work with 10% of your workforce for starters?

We have customers who have reduced their office space use by around 50% using home working. This has helped them to be more competitive and profitable with little or no effect on their business functions. It does work.

How do you do IT?

To kick things off you need;

A reasonable Server 2-3 years old should do
Windows Server 2003 (standard edition)
Some client access licenses
A standard broadband line (this will run around 5-10 users depending on the applications they’re using)
We install and configure the VPN connection so it’s a secure link
At the user end there is a simple download with some setting up which we can do (no onsite visit needed). All they need is a broadband connection and a PC/laptop around 2-4 years, if it runs Windows XP that's fine

How does it look working from home?

Users log on remotely using the usual log on screen, the only difference they see is this yellow tab bar at the top of the screen

Working from home log on screen

Once they log on it looks like a usual Windows screen so they can put which ever icons, shortcuts and applications they want
At this stage everything they are doing is being done inside your server in their own session (even though they are at home). All they get is a display of what's going on sent to their home PC/laptop
As far as your users are concerned there is little difference in how their connection looks from home compared to in the office
Your business software will run the same because it's still running in the same server
If you use Microsoft Exchange 2003 users can be set up with access to their own mailbox in exactly the same way as they do in the office, no synchronising to be done.

Server hosting service

Using your existing server from anywhere

If pulling out of your office space altogether is an option we can host your server at our premises and set up access to it in our building from anyone in the company (securly of course); we’ll even make sure your backups run so your data is kept safe.

Using our own managed server from anywhere

Should your own server not be up to the job we can install your software and data on to one of our own secure servers; no capital outlay just an affordable monthly charge..