Implementing SmartOffice® across the country - tips, tricks and traps

Implementing SmartOffice^® across the Country - Tips, Tricks and Traps
By leveraging digital-first strategies, a number of start-up businesses have shown the potential to disrupt their bigger and more established rivals. Setting up its office with a strong combination of technology assets is a prime task for any new business. Most start-ups are aware of the tools they will need for connectivity, collaboration and data management. However, having to deal with multiple vendors makes the IT infrastructure administration challenging.

For a majority of small-scale businesses that have 15-150 employees, it becomes challenging to deal with the initial costs of setting up a reliable IT infrastructure. One of the reasons why small and medium enterprises (SMEs) start-ups are increasingly investing in virtual and smart offices is their budget efficiency.

A smart and virtual workspace allows the employees to work flexibly from any location and helps them to stay seamlessly connected to customers. They can store and share data through the cloud, hold meetings in high-end conference rooms and leverage a variety of voice and video-based applications.

Tips and tricks to create one
The question then is – how to deploy a smart office with the right mix of network setups and tools? What systems will make it successful and help the team to stay productive and deliver results with the expected quality levels?

Uninterrupted network connectivity is the top prerequisite for such workplaces. They can establish this using fibre broadband, Internet leased line or MPLS VPN. The costs, benefits and drawbacks of each of these options need to be compared in detail before the enterprise makes a choice for its LAN.

Businesses also need project management tools to enable coordination between the employees working on the same assignment. In a virtual or hybrid smart office model, cloud collaboration tools can be used for this purpose. Such tools also help the supervisors to check the progress of the tasks and the contribution of every member involved in the work.

All information, which is otherwise printed on paper and kept in files in a traditional office setup, can be stored in cloud platforms. The team can access the folders they need at any time and from any part of the world. Business owners need to make a scrupulous choice for the cloud service provider since the security and confidentiality of the stored information are a priority.

A team will also need to meet and hold conferences to work in unison and achieve the business goals. With the employees travelling or working from remote locations, this can only be feasible with web conferencing tools. It calls for the download of an appropriate desktop sharing app and brings the entire team on it by emailing them the invitations to use it. Once the members install the app’s extension on their browsers and join in at the designated date and time, they can all be a part of a live web and telephonic conference from anywhere.

The traps that can impede this setup
As a business seeking the right tools and applications for your smart office, you need to break the silos and ensure that the chosen network settings and software systems are compatible. This is where things can get tricky. Dealing with multiple vendors, ensuring timely upgrades and safeguarding the IT architecture against malware or cyber crimes are also difficult.

Such problems can be addressed by procuring an integrated IT solution. What the start-ups need today is a custom package that comes with a reliable network bandwidth and managed services. They should also be able to afford the costs and be future-ready.

Tata Tele Business Services has come up with SmartOffice^® – a single box solution that enables access to voice, data, storage and apps for businesses. With this tool, they do not have to invest in multiple setups or look for different service providers to configure the components of the IT infrastructure in their office.

Whether a start-up has a physical office, a virtual workspace or a hybrid business model with a combination of both, it gets a conveniently deployable solution in SmartOffice^®. As the industry’s first SLA-backed SIP Trunk for voice connectivity in India, this single box tool supports both IP and analogue phones. Speak to a Tata Tele Business Services associate to know more about the product and implement a balanced and cost-efficient IT infrastructure for your organisation.