Work-from-home connectivity – challenges for IT managers

Following the announcement by President Cyril Ramphosa of a lockdown for all non-essential businesses in South Africa, many companies have scrambled to get their employees ready to work from home.

While some roles were already used to partial home working, for many others this is a first. Especially roles that were typically office bound, such as administrative, accounting and call centre staff, now have to be set up from home.

Reliable connectivity remains one of the single most important things for IT managers to get right. While some employees might have reliable fibre connectivity in place, for many others, providing reliable mobile LTE data connectivity is the quickest and best way to get connected from home fast.

The big benefit of mobile data is that you can get connected immediately and don’t have to worry about where exactly the employee will be based. Deploying and managing SIMs for home use at scale, however, comes with costs and risks. Not having SIM-level control can easily lead to abuse and bill shock.

With over 10 years’ experience, the SIMcontrol service from Flickswitch can get your employees connected quickly and reliably. Being network-agnostic means SIMs from all major networks can be ordered, deployed and managed in bulk.

Scaling up fast is important, but scaling down fast is just as important. SIMcontrol has no long-term contracts, so SIMs can be deactivated immediately as needed. SIM-level caps, one central account and detailed reports takes the pain out of employee SIM management at scale.

Refunding employees data, airtime

Some employees (or even learners) may use their own SIMs cards for data connectivity or phone calls when working from home. With SIMcontrol, you can add existing employee SIMs to the platform and instantly schedule data bundles or airtime top-ups directly to their devices.

For more information, visit www.simcontrol.co.za.