Tools to assist businesses to work from home

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Counterpoint Group director Craig Smith is a certified business advisor in the BLP Network of Advisors. He highlights the importance of Google Workspace as a tool to assist businesses who are allowing employees to work from home. Picture: SUPPLIED

Since the global pandemic hit Fiji in 2020 a lot of business operational norms have changed and many have had to adopt to a different way of functioning to ensure that their business is still operating.

One of the major changes for many companies is allowing their staff to work remotely from home to ensure that all business operations continue as normal in terms of keeping up to date with accounts, attending virtual training or attending virtual meetings.

Training and meetings are being conducted virtually because of the many restrictions placed on movement to help stop the spread of COVID-19. Companies have had to ensure that their staff are well equipped at home to attend meetings or rather continue doing their daily tasks from home.

Business Link Pacific director Steve Knapp highlighted that the use of technology had always been at the forefront of Business Link Pacific services and operations.

He said they knew the private sector required support to adapt to continually emerging challenges, such as impacted cash flows, disrupted supply chains and poor access to digital financial services.

“Business advisory services can provide invaluable support to business owners at this time of change.

BLP works continuously to provide solutions such as online business tools, adaptation grants and remote support through in-country partners.

“At Business Link Pacific, we understand and have seen first-hand the digital transformation taking place in the region with increased digital adoption and connectivity. We are experiencing rapid changes in the way people work, from an increased number of companies operating with disaggregated teams across countries and regions to a wave of business innovations that looks to reinvent products and services,” said Mr Knapp.

Counterpoint Group director Craig Smith who is a certified business advisor in the BLP Network of Advisors, highlighted the importance of the Google Workspace as a tool that can assist businesses who are allowing employees to work from home.

“Google Workspace has helped over 6 million businesses to transform from traditional ‘in office’ operations — into geographically separated team environments, by providing the tools to facilitate ‘virtual’ communication between employees and their customers,” said Mr Smith.

He adds that Google Workspace is a suite of applications that allow businesses to seamlessly connect via secure email to share and store documents and files securely online, to host video meetings and chat forums, to create and collaborate (edit) documents, spreadsheets and presentations at the same time. Here are just some of the tools that Google Workspace offers:

 Business Grade gmail enables you to send & receive your email, from any device, in a SPAM-free environment. Think of it like Gmail, but with your custom business domain name (eg. hello@counterpoint. digital), along a detailed array of administrative controls to ensure security, data privacy, and advanced routing, identity and message delivery features.

 Cloud Storage via Google drive is a place to store and share your data, documents, and files, inside your chosen folder structure. It is a ‘cloud based’ version of a legacy office filer server, with granular access permission structures to ensure security.

 Google Meet is the video conferencing function which enables face-to-face meetings and presentations, with full screen sharing capabilities, Q&A, polling, screen recording, closed captioning, background customisation. Think of it like Zoom, but without extra fees as Meet is included with your Google Workspace license.

 Google chat and rooms are short messaging functions which facilitate communication on either a one-on-one or team basis.

 Google docs, sheets, slides, and forms are a full suite of document editors which support real-time document login and editing across multiple users. It’s like being in a meeting and updating a central document without having to be physically present. Everyone connected to the same document, at the same time!

Mr Smith explained that some organisations migrate their company data from a traditional office based file server to Google Drive in order to easily access files and folders remotely and share information with colleagues, suppliers and clients.

“Google Workspace offers a wide range of workplace tools, designed to help both employers and employees make working from home, flexible and secure.

“Employees are able to process their tasks on mobile devices (phones or laptops) from anywhere, making Google Workspace ubiquitously accessible.

“It’s an incredible platform that suits organisations of all shapes and sizes. Some of our customers have just a single-user license, whilst others have more than 500,” said Mr Smith.

For businesses that are unsure on the process of shifting from an office environment to remote working you can always contact BLP and we can direct you to a business advisor who can assist you with the transition and also explain to you the importance of such a transition in these uncertain times for the business economy.

Jessica Gounder is the communications officer, Fiji for Business Link Pacific. The views expressed in this article are her own and not necessarily that of this newspaper.

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