5 Tools to Improve Your Virtual Infrastructure
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Moving your offices is no easy task, and it’s especially complicated if the place you’re moving your workspace to is online. Hello, and welcome back to Expertel’s weekly blog post, where today, we’ll be going over a couple of ideas to strengthen and improve your virtual infrastructure. If you’re new to the blog, we’d like to encourage you to scroll through our previous entries, where you can find additional information on a broad range of topics that might interest you. With that being said, let’s get back to today’s list. Here’s our list of 5 tools to help your company thrive in its new virtual world.
Tailor-fit Your Working Tools
As you begin to take the first steps towards digital workspaces, you’ll quickly realize how overwhelming choosing your working platforms can be. Should your platform be collaboration-oriented, or would your team be better off with other platforms that focus more on enforcing deadlines for individual work? Getting to know well which tools are needed most, and which are just “nice-to-haves” should be the first step in determining your ideal platform. By doing this, you’ll have a better idea about whether the platform you’re choosing will have everything you need for your business to operate, even if some of its features aren’t fully developed to suit your needs. However, there’s another option. You can also choose to build your customized platform. Having a tailor-made platform allows you to streamline workflow by providing your team with an ideal environment to access anything they need from a single place. Although obvious, it’s also worth mentioning that customized working platforms will always include all of the features you need, with the depth you require to ensure a steady flow and the user friendliness necessary to make the adaptation easier for your workers. A customized working platform can also be a great tool to eliminate distractions, track coming deadlines, check progress on your current projects and compare results in a quick and easy way. As we’ve said before, when it comes to streamlining, there’s nothing that compares to custom-made, so give it a thought before you make your decision.
Improved Hardware – 200
The next step toward your company’s digitalization is to consider the need for new hardware. Although the main objective of this process is to build your business’ virtual infrastructure, we can’t ignore the fact that hardware is also a big part of the equation. Hardware is the means through which you’ll access and navigate your digital environment, so you’ll also need to decide if you’re ready to make that investment. There’s simply no way around the fact that new technology also comes at a higher price, however, it also comes with more horsepower and new features which can prove useful to your business. There’s also the security aspect, which we previously mentioned in our article about 5G technology. The point we made in that article basically comes down to the fact that having outdated technology creates a potential risk, since newer technology has an advantage over it. However, this technological gap doesn’t mean that your business is in imminent danger, but rather, that the sooner you transition to it, the more at peace your mind can be. Despite everything we just mentioned, we still feel the need to point out that hardware updates should always be carefully considered to ensure that resources are properly spent. A well-planned upgrade can be costly in the short term, but very profitable in the long run.
Keep Your Oversight, Anywhere
Since we’re on the topic of remote services and management, we also want to include Mobile Device Management (MDM) to the list. MDM has the potential to become an ideal tool to manage your hardware remotely by allowing you to keep track of your mobile fleet’s data usage. You can also use it to avoid risks by blacklisting or whitelisting apps or even pre-setting your corporate apps in every phone by default. MDM also has the advantage of enabling your business to enforce software and security updates, which is perfect to cover your back during your 5G adaptation period, especially if you’re aiming for a gradual transition over a longer period. That being said, we must also admit that MDM tools should not be thought of as a replacement to other, stronger security measures, which is why we included our next item on this list.
Keep Your Business Protected Online
and Offline
Alright, let’s assume that you’ve got everything on this list already set up and running. Now what? Well, if your main focus is security, one of the best ways to strengthen your virtual office space is allocating your information on a secure server. As we pointed out in our previous item, the adoption gap can be a risky stage to navigate, particularly if your business operates on sensitive information, whether your own, or most importantly, your client’s. Secure servers take the risk out of the equation, giving you the confidence that you need to keep your business up-and-running without worrying about your valuable data or wasting more resources on additional measures. You could also pair this feature with an MDM tool to cover every aspect related to security, allowing you to focus on more important matters.
Get To Know Your Clients Better
Any business owner will agree that knowing your clients well is winning half the battle. Whether you’re launching a new marketing campaign or creating a new product line for your brand, having a concrete idea about whom you’re selling to, is fundamental to your strategy. However, collecting this data can be very time-consuming and resource intensive. To get around this, you can subscribe to a Big Data service, which basically gathers consumer information about your target market and delivers that information to you on-demand, whenever you need it. Having Big Data on your side can also help you find new opportunities in unattended markets that fit your brand, opening the door to new strategies, a broader audience and new possibilities for your business. That being said, we’d also like to point out that the price you’re paying for the Big Data service, as steep as it may be (depending on the amount and depth of the information you’re looking for), is also saving you money and other resources by preventing potentially failed launches and enabling you to make better, more informed decisions. Before we finish this item, there’s one more advantage that Big Data offers, although intangible. Having hard data backing up your decisions can make a huge difference when you’re trying to persuade someone. It gives you that easiness and confidence that you need to make your point, and that right there, is priceless for any business.
Now, to be fair, these are just some of the ideas that we came up with to help you improve your digital infrastructure. If you’re looking for even more ideas on how to keep strengthening and growing your business online or want Expertel to help you get some the items on this list done, feel free to get in touch with us by filling out the contact form that you’ll find by following this link to our contact page. We hope you found some of the stuff in this article useful and we’ll see you next week, on our next blog post!
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