Business Technology Simplified by Microsoft Corporation

Author:Microsoft Corporation
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-10-08T07:00:00+00:00

Providing Remote Access to a Business Network

Can your employees work from offsite and still easily access all of the resources they would have in the office? Is not being able to access your information when you’re away from the office slowing you down?

For Jerry Thompson, president and owner of Promoter Line, keeping his engineers productive on the road is also a top priority. In fact, for Jerry’s employees, being on the road is more the norm than the exception. If you’ve read chapter 7, “Work Together More Effectively with Anyone Using Collaborative Technology,” you’ve already met Jerry. As you saw in that chapter, enabling better teamwork is a key concern for him. But helping his employees work when they’re away from the office is even more important — because if they can’t work effectively offsite, he can’t run his business.

Jerry’s company organizes entertainment events all over the United States. His employees host functions everywhere from the busiest urban settings to empty fields in the most remote rural locations. They work on sites ranging from sports facilities to empty lots to neighborhood parks.

Because the events take place all over the country, when one of Jerry’s engineers goes to work, it’s a rare occasion that he or she reports to the office for more than a few minutes. In fact, most of his employees spend more than 80 percent of their time on the road. That means that for four out of five days, they must get their work done without using an office computer and without access to any paperwork they didn’t bring with them. In some cases, they are away from the office for weeks at a time.

Regardless of where they are working, his staff has to manage every aspect of event production. Their responsibilities often include designing the site plan, building the power grid, setting up the stage, and managing entertainers, vendors, and contractors. Coordinating so many complex event details can be a logistical nightmare. Coordinating them without a complete view of the event information is a near impossibility. Jerry knew that for the events to go off without a hitch, his employees needed to have access to that information wherever they were.

So, from the start, he made sure that all employees had their own portable computer. Before heading offsite, they would load any files they needed onto their computer. However, if they forgot an important document before they left, they’d have to go back to the office to get it. This cost them time (and didn’t impress their clients). Jerry realized that it wasn’t enough for his team to simply take files with them when they left for an event site — they needed to be able to access the most up-to-date information while on the road.

The first step was to make sure his employees could connect to the Internet from anywhere. This was relatively easy — he simply got them all wireless Internet cards from his mobile phone vendor. These cards give his staff Internet access wherever there is cellular phone reception.

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