How do you manage your remote IT services?

Question

Curious how mid to small to medium sized remote only companies are handling things like laptop provisioning / shipping / monitoring, helping employees set up home offices, etc. Do you have an in house person? Use a service?

ogreen · Accepted Answer

1. Remote employees have less to none access to peripheral hardware. Make sure the remote employees will get a 1/2 yearly budget to order the items that they need to perform their job. Like headphones, keyboard, and more. For salesman, it is possible to rent them a printer with support to avoid any possible wasted time to support the printer remotely. Some companies gives to new employees money to by any computer that they need, and they will get the warranty and even OS support from the shop.
2. Look for a software deployment tool over the WAN to push the required software and update for new and existing employees. In addition, use a tool that performs software asset management to see which programs and their versions are installed on the remote computers.
3. Use remote tools like Jamf for Mac to get more control of the computers that you manage.
4. Perform a periodically questionnaire to understand their needs and make the required changes in the IT process to fit their needs.
5. More security hardening is required to avoid any possible breaches or data leaks. Use MDM and DLP solutions for such purposes.
6. Collaboration is a must to stay productive in this way of work. Training the management level with the available collaboration features that are exist in solutions like Google Apps and Office 365, will fill up this void.
7. Send the employees the available channels to communicate with IT. Never let employees contact IT representatives directly. This is to ensure the quality of service in case an IT representative isn't available.
8. Monitor the Helpdesk ticketing system to learn about the employees' problems.
9. Create an internal public documentation website that employees can enter to seek for solutions for known problems. When an employee encounter a problem, just send him the link with a step-by-step solution instead of wasting time on support.
10. In the past, employees came to the IT office for support and assistance . Today, IT need to initiate the communication with the employees to ensure that their environment and remote quality is sufficient for them to be productive.
Good luck...