Things are a bit crazy out there. Many of your clients have likely shut down their offices — where possible — and moved to work-from-home. Even businesses like restaurants have had to alter the way they do business — and it’s going to have an impact on you and how you conduct your business.
As things go topsy-turvy, your clients need your expertise now, more than ever. While some clients may have had a small percentage of employees who worked from home prior to this, chances are good none of them had gone 100 percent unless they happened to be a distributed workforce.
People who have never worked from home before will need help setting up systems that are in many cases, completely foreign to them. If they weren’t using cloud tools before, they are now going to have to use them to share files, to video conference, to virtual white board, to collaborate, and more. Further, if they don’t have a single sign-on tool like Okta, they are going to need one now. If they don’t have a second way of verifying who your employees are, like Duo, they are going to need this now.
And, as we’ve seen with Zoombombing, if you don’t execute work-from-home right, there are bad actors out there who are willing to take advantage of a horrible situation and exploit it. However, there are also ways to prevent that kind of exploitation, such as adding a meeting password and making people wait in a virtual waiting room to be let in, but you have to know about these tips and tricks.
As an MSP, it will be part of your job to educate your clients throughout this crisis.
Holding hands
Keep in mind that it’s going to take some patience to get these systems rolling. Give your clients a break. In a few short months, they are being asked to go through a digital transformation that often takes years of planning and execution. It’s not easy, but as an MSP, it’s your job to guide them through it.
One thing that can come in handy right now is remote desktop technology, which lets you take over someone’s computer, and install software and set up other things they may be having trouble accomplishing for themselves.
Sometimes it’s simply easier to do it for them. Remote desktop tooling allows you to smooth over the rough patches that less technical employees are going to face as they go through the transition to work-from-home.
Just remember that people are being forced to work in entirely new ways, sometimes with very little training. As an MSP, it’s your job to shepherd them through this from a technology perspective, and help them get over the hump.
Photo: eamesBot / Shutterstock
