Remote Working is No Longer a Nice-to-Have

The opportunity to work from home was once seen as something for the privileged few and often owing to a lack of proper infrastructure was not always as productive for businesses and employees alike.

2020 has changed all that and now organisations are finding themselves playing catch up to ensure that their staff can work remotely both securely and efficiently.

Looking After your Customers is Essential When Working Remotely

Perhaps the most important aspect of your working from home strategy is ensuring that your customers, the lifeblood of your business see no reduction in the levels of service they receive. Providing them with an excellent experience is arguably more important now than when face to face contact was the norm.

As we all know from personal bitter experience, one of the worst things to hear as a customer is “I don’t have that information, I’ll get back to you….”

Avoiding this scenario is all about having up to date information to hand which can be retrieved immediately.

Provide Secure Access and Maintain Control

Enabling your staff access to the key information they need is absolutely critical to remote working. This should of course be centrally structured and should avoid at all costs any move to deviate from this to ensure security and to avoid any compromise of either data or processes.

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Make Sure you are Working with the Right Version

With employees now working in numerous off-site locations, the opportunity for potentially sensitive information being moved outside the company’s control increases significantly. This obviously brings with it many issues relative to security and compliance but also to the very real risk of several versions of the same document being in existence.

Information should never be allowed to be stored on private devices or shared via email or other media. Such chaotic practises can be avoided by using a document management system where all access is securely controlled and restrictions placed upon what individuals can access and transmit.

Plan for the Future Now

When faced with events such as those experienced by business this year, it is understandably tempting to choose a quick fix solution driven by evolving events.

Whilst this strategy might bring some short-term benefits and will not be without cost, does it represent the long-term solution or simply kick the can down the road?

Critically does it provide secure permission driven access to only those documents they are entitled to access, a central document depository ensuring everyone is working with the same latest data and full track and trace accountability?

Why Act Now?

A recent study commissioned by the Association of Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) revealed worryingly that more than 60% of UK companies are still totally reliant on network shared drives. More worryingly still, 50% of employees have owned up to sharing company data via personal pathways.

The serious implications of this cannot be understated, potentially leading to your most sensitive information being vulnerable, with limited or unreliable access and poor or non-existent version control.

Whilst this situation would be serious enough in more normal times, the consequences become magnified in the hands of an increasingly remote workforce.

What Can You Do to Avoid a Problem Becoming a Crisis?

The first and obvious step is to ensure that your remote working employees are not using personal folders and tools for the storage and transmission of your data.

This should ideally be replaced with a recognised document management solution (DMS), increasingly Cloud based, which will provide you with the following controls.

A single location document depository
Secure permission driven access
Version Control (you are always working with the latest document version)
Full track and trace audit
Automated workflow process

To hear more about how BPMS addresses the issue of efficient and secure remote access to all data, please contact us to arrange your free no obligation consultation.

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