How to take advantage of a modern backup solution in the COVID19 crisis and how to help employees work from home

  • 27 January 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 120 views

Userlevel 2
Badge +6

When the pandemic hit, we were forced to quickly adapt and answer a bunch of questions we’d never asked ourselves: how can we keep in touch with our colleagues when we’re not in the office? And how can we make sure we are still efficient while working from home?

It quickly became apparent that one, seemingly small issue could prove catastrophic: our information system is designed so all business documents are located on our servers and on our work computers. But this also meant that many wouldn’t be able to access these documents from home.

Since the employees were already familiar with the backup system, this new opportunity only confirmed our desire to modernize the complete system and to digitize business processes.

Everyone was aware that these changes were necessary, that it would help them work through the emergency, and, most importantly, that working from home wouldn’t be an insurmountable problem.

A new short manual was compiled to help employees adapt to working from home, with an emphasis on how they can use secure https connections to access their data and documents located on file servers.

Now, when they need to share a document with colleagues, they don’t have to send an email with a file, which further burdens the email system, but can simply share a link to the document itself through the backup application. Doing so even enables them to work better together, allowing them to edit a document, or just allow them to look at it.

By implementing this solution, we have reduced the use of email systems for sending documents between employees by almost 40% in the first 15 days of using the system. In a later analysis, we saw that compared to March 2019, the total number of emails sent and received with external users in March 2020 increased by an incredible 250%.

Which was certainly a sign to us that all communication with them will be done via email, so we had the need to ensure that the email system works without problems, and that employees use a different solution from home. 

This solution is not unique; we did not create it from scratch. We have only taken advantage of several features and functionalities offered by the backup system, which are applicable in situations when users need it. We did not have time to do something new, but as users of various IT solutions we looked at what synergies and pairings can help us in this crisis situation.

What we want to remind you is that due to the whole situation and the short time, we tried to make the most of the existing tools, software that we have. To come up with a solution by combining several systems. Sometimes it is enough to just look a little deeper into the systems we use and that with some small changes, additions we can use them for such crisis situations. We were all aware that we had neither the time nor the money to hire external firms for new software solutions.


3 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

Great conversation and perspective!  there’s definitely secondary impacts from the larger ones.  As you thoughtfully mentioned, if we’re all using e-mail far more often, then it becomes SO MUCH more important to keep stable and keep protected with a valid backup and restore process.

Userlevel 2
Badge +6

 

I agree, but it should be emphasized here, that for internal correspondence and collaboration, we do not always have to use email. We need to look at all the tools we have in our area, maybe some have some more possibilities.

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

 

I agree, but it should be emphasized here, that for internal correspondence and collaboration, we do not always have to use email. We need to look at all the tools we have in our area, maybe some have some more possibilities.

Good point.  I know personally, I have never used Teams or Slack as much in my life as I have in the past year!

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