Johannesburg, 11 Aug 2020
We’ve all been there: you try to log onto your computer in the morning, open all your tasks and get the spinning wheel of death. You go away, make coffee, come back and it’s still spinning. According to Barry Venter, CEO of Nashua, this is an avoidable problem. “When employees were based at an office building, they could report the issue to their IT department, who could then see what was causing the issue. However, the majority of South Africa’s workforce is still working remotely, which makes IT issues all the more challenging to resolve for user and an IT support team alike.
“With the majority of staff working from home becoming the norm in many businesses, we’re finding that a lot of IT professionals are just not accustomed to managing devices remotely over long periods of time. The good news is that with an Internet connection, IT support teams can manage and track assets from any location – the devices no longer have to be on-premises or on the VPN to push updates through.
“Remote monitoring and management solutions are more important now than ever before,” he continues. “With employees having been given the ability to work from anywhere, companies are increasingly reliant on platforms that allow them to manage IT assets, automate IT services and simplify service delivery, while allowing them to support the end-user remotely. This may take the form of remote diagnostics and support or remote maintenance, both corrective and preventative.”
Today’s businesses are primarily worried about survival. Their focus is on having a productive workforce and saving costs where they can. Automating the management of their IT assets can assist them in reaching their business goals, while freeing them up to focus on succeeding and adapting to this new world and challenging economy.
Remote monitoring and management of IT systems holds advantages for the business and the user alike. For instance, being able to monitor hardware and application performance on remote users’ devices can ensure the business continuity and proactively detect potential threats, while keeping software up to date as releases are issued. “Just doing this will significantly reduce the number of faults reported to the IT help desk,” says Venter.
The business end-user challenge can be resolved faster as issues can be resolved remotely, there’s no need for the customer to wait for the support technician to travel to their location in order to assist. In many cases, potential problems can be proactively addressed before they even affect the user, which means less downtime for the user, increasing productivity. However, when faults are reported, IT support teams need to be able to support the users remotely, regardless of their location.
In addition, e-mail notifications can be sent to an IT support team making them aware of issues on devices, while software management and Windows update management will save them days of work, freeing them up to focus on bigger tasks while following the customer’s change management governance processes.
With the advent of COVID-19, the traditional concept of business has changed and, by the looks of it, this trend will remain long after the pandemic has passed. By deploying a remote monitoring and management solution, the business has peace of mind of knowing that someone is picking up those alerts and dealing with them.
Share