"Work from home" is a hot keyword right now and "Work-from-Home-Ready" might be a hottest keyword in coming months or years. Some companies are "Work-from-Home-Ready" while some or not. Here's some basic tips which might help some companies including the micro and small enterprise to become "Work-from-Home-Ready". To enable yourself or your staff to work from home, there're few tools and equipments that we're required to have and some problems or considerations that we might need to plan and consider.

The problems and considerations :

1) Accessibility to information and resources
The informations and documents is the basic things that we would need to access when we're out from the office. From the basic information, such as customer information, quotation, invoice, to the more advance likes the P&L report, inventory status and etc. In other words, we need to have access to the documents and information when we're out from the office.

2) Collaboration within the team
For any company who have more than 1 person, the collaboration is a necessity. Collaboration might including meeting, work together for a report, and assigning the different tasks to different persons for the project and etc.

3) Efficiency
When we're required to work remotely or out from the office, the efficiency might be affected. The reason is we might not able to access some resources or informations through the direct channel but need to use the alternative way. The efficency might affect by the speed to access the information, the speed to discuss, or the speed to prepare the report.

4) Productivity
There're some alternative ways for us to access to the information / resources when work from home or work remotely, but whether we can still achieve the same objective within the same period of time compare to work in the office is another considerations.

5) Security
Apart from all the mentioned considerations, the security of the informations, data and documents is the issues that we should not forgot. When we have the convenient and accessibility to the informations and documents even when we're out from the office, this indicate that other parties might have the chances to access our informations and documents too. This is the considerations that every business owners should take into considerations.


The tools or equipments :
1) Document Sharing Server.
Files sharing or documents sharing server over the internet is extremely important when you need to work from home, or you need mobility. Some companies is having the on premise server or some even using the portable hard drive, by having on premise server, you might still access to your file through remote desktop, team viewer or some are using the VPN. However, this might required some technical setup, and the speed ( efficiency )  when you work from outside might not be good as you work in your office. The better alternative is the cloud based document sharing server. The cloud based document sharing server is better in terms of the scalability, security, accessibility, efficiency and productivity.

2) Corporate Email.
Email is not a new topic for many people, but the personal email ( or in another words the free email ) and corporate email is very different. The first significant benefit of having the corporate email is the security of the data. The corporate email identity is owned by the company while the personal email identity is owned by the personal or a staff, the company's owned confidential information should not be exposed or transmitted through the personal email.

3) Laptop or Portable Computer
By having the mobility for us to work out from the office or work from home, the portable computer is the basic tool that we need.

4) Internet Access
By accessing the information throught document server, email or video conference, the internet is the basic.

5) Video Conference Equipments and Tools
When meeting is required when someone or everyone is out from the office, or from different locations, the video conference tools is needed, this might including a microphone, a headphone or speakers, the video cam, and the software platform to host the meeting. Some PC already equiped with the hardware accessories before market while some PC need to add after market.

6) The All-In-One Printer.
To increase the productivity when we work from home, a all-in-one printer is required. The all-in-one printer enable us to print, scan and copy.

7) The Secondary monitor / display.
To work from home, our productivity might be affected compare to the better equipments or tools at the office. By having the secondary monitor to our PC / laptop, the multiple screen might help us to improve the productivity.

Some common solutions that we can propose :

1) GSuite
- Cloud based document sharing server.
- Corporate email.
- Better security compare to on premise server.
- Better accessibility compare to on premise server.
- Better speed compare to on premise server.

2) Google Hangout. - A tools included with GSuite.
- To host the video conference.

While for the All-In-One Printer and Laptops, we have more solutions for you.

If any of you or your company need further advise on this, kindly leave the comment, or contact us directly through whatsapp, our technical consultant might be able to tailormade some solutions for you or your company.