Mobile Communications: taying in Touch When You are Out!
Added 31st March 2009
These days we are expected to be accessible all the time
Benefits of Mobile/Remote Working
Huge numbers of us work in jobs where we are expected to be accessible virtually 24/7 whether we are in the office, at home or on the road. Three out of every four UK businesses have staff who work away from the main office some or all of the week. Until fairly recently, keeping in touch whilst out and about centred around a combination of a mobile phone and having access to a computer linked to the web.
All that changed with the introduction of the ubiquitous Blackberry (in one of its many guises), more recently the iPhone and Windows Mobile. These small handheld communicators happily deal with voice calls but have full QWERTY keyboards too, letting you surf the net, connect up with your office systems, receive and send emails, construct and save all manner of new documents and send them to third parties. Subject to a network signal being available, you can now be be in complete touch with everything going on in the world and the office.
Some people disagree that this 24 hour availability is an advance, but those in busy jobs,under pressure in these tough economic times, consider it a real step forwards.
One big downside with handheld devices, and Blackberry in particular, is that they can be prone to problems with Spam on a major scale. I strongly recommend that anyone with a smartphone uploads a software program designed to filter outunwanted emails, preventing blocked up mailboxes and maintaining work efficiency. One such package is "ClearMyMail" which can be accessed at www.clearmymail.com where you can sign up for a free trial. After all, if work has provided you with or you have bought yourself a smartphone, there's not much point in having it blocked up with unsolicited email rubbish!
For those who want to be able to connect up and check on their work/home mailbox while on the move, there are a couple of ways to achieve this. You can either set the smartphone up to receive a copy of all messages received at base or you can purchase a remote accesss package such as "LogMeIn". Using LogMeIn is easy . You can deactivate it when you don't wnat to use it and it will give you access to all data held on your desktop or laptop back in the office. You can find out more about LogMeIn at www. .Naturally we would be delighted to talk to you more about issues affecting mobile communicators. Just give us a call on 01225 745732 to discover all the latest news.
The mobile workforce or virtual office
- Greater working efficiency
- Work when you want. May improve work/life balance
- Quicker responses and improved customer care
- Contactable via one phone number if you wish
- Able to point all your email to one address if you wish and pick it up as you move around
- Able to choose how and when you WANT to be contacted.If you only want emails, texts or voice calls,just set the system up to suit your needs.
Some Do's and Don'ts
Do
- Get proper advice on making the most of your Smartphone/notebook/laptop
- Make sure you have a secure password which is required before the device can be used
- Make sure the data held in the mobile device is backed up regularly
- Ensure you have suitable levels of security including encryption software.
- We have discussed encryption via TruCrypt in one of our earlier blogs.
Don't
- Allow mobile devices to have free access to your sensitive corporate dat unless very strong security measures are in place (VPN's, authentication processes and encryption for instance)
- Forget that remote working with mobile devices will lead to a whole lot more data packets flying around and you will need to make sure that the broadband package you are using is sufficient to cope with that and that office servers are capable of handling such growth.
At the end of the day, like anything else which is introduced without thought, mobile comms can potentially cause lots of problems for business. Keeping on top of access levels, security levels and supplier packages will prevent that and let you and your colleagues make profitable use of this new technology.
