For the Vancouver Area winters are typically warm and mostly snow free, only in some cases, we get few days of good snow like this February of 2019. In fact, this is the coldest February in the past 4 years far according to weatherstats.ca

From a business perspective, weather can have a significant impact on the bottom line. Businesses can be affected directly or indirectly. Customer behavior changes, employees attendance declines, projects being delayed.

Depending on a nature of business implementing the remote work environment will minimize or even eliminate all of the above – that can be achieved by incorporating the following tools that will allow the staff to perform its tasks remotely:

Cloud Based Telephone System – with a traditional telephone system you are limited to your office location. Multiple service providers offer use of Softphones – an application that enables Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls from computing devices. You can have all the features of PBX without expensive equipment set up at the office. Softphones allow businesses to make and receive calls from anywhere in the world through any type of mobile or computer device.

Collaboration – with tools from Microsoft Office365, like Teams for collaboration, Delve for data visualization and discovery working on common projects has never been more convenient.

Cloud storage – storing data in the cloud as oppose having it stored on-permises allows business access to it from anywhere in the world at any time. Security can be achieved through the device compliance policies and solutions such as two-factor authentication or single sign-on.

Cloud Server Hosting – provides hosting of the virtual servers off-premises eliminates the need for server physical maintenance and provides on-demand availability features and guaranteed up-time besides all other features.

First steps towards the Cloud – this growing IT trend provides business with faster and more convenient access to IT resources. Some resources will work great in the cloud while some will only perform while being on-premises.

Best way to start is to evaluate emerging technology breakthroughs, assess which ones that is right for your business and create a roadmap to roll them out to stay ahead of competition.