Guest Column | May 9, 2022

The Channel's Role In Supporting Remote Work

By Mike Majewski, CEO at SEH Technology

Remote Workforce

Before 2020, managers were skeptical about remote work. However, when the pandemic forced people to work from home, they found their teams could maintain – or even increase – productivity. Furthermore, the remote work model gives businesses the ability to hire from an expanded talent pool and decrease office space and overhead costs. Now that many businesses have successfully completed a remote work model proof-of-concept, Upwork research shows that as many as 40.7 million or 28 percent of full-time American professionals will be fully remote by 2026.

Adopting A Long-Term Remote Work Model

Because of the rapid shift to remote work, some businesses quickly found ways to accommodate it, expecting the change to be temporary. Now that working from home will be permanent, at least part-time, for professionals, businesses are turning to value-added resellers (VARs) and managed service providers (MSPs) to help them implement technology that supports efficient operations and a secure IT environment.

The shift to remote work is creating significant opportunities for VARs and MSPs with expertise in:

  • Remote Connections

Basically, your clients can choose two ways to give remote workers access to company applications and data.

  • Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that allows employees to work remotely in a virtualized environment.
  • Virtual private network (VPN) that creates a secure, private connection to the business’ physical infrastructure.

Your experience as a solutions provider will benefit your clients as they decide how to connect remote workers to their systems, taking performance, user experiences, and costs into account.

  • Communication

Without the ability to walk to a colleagues’ desk to ask a question, teams need to find effective ways to communicate and collaborate remotely. Hosted VoIP is a cost-effective way to keep a team connected with voice, video, and messaging, in addition to features that allow calls to find an employee who works in different locations at different times. Enterprise solutions also enable customer relationship management (CRM) integration and support for advanced unified communications (UC) solutions.

  • Hardware

Your clients are realizing that issuing company-owned laptops or other devices can contribute to more secure networks. Requiring security-hardened devices and limiting the applications employees can use on them decreases the chance that malicious code will wind up on the network. The downside of issuing devices, however, is that they can be lost or stolen, which could mean mounting expenses, particularly if a laptop is loaded with a copy-protected software license. A USB dongle server can minimize losses by allowing the software to be loaded on the network where it’s protected from loss.

  • Cloud Migration

Businesses and organizations often lack in-house resources capable of transitioning on-premises systems to the cloud. Your ability to plan and execute a move to the cloud will help clients avoid disruption to operations, delays, and data loss. You also can provide services that help them manage their cloud environment to keep costs under control.

  • Security

An IT environment that includes employees’ home offices and devices used remotely requires a fresh look at the company’s security strategy and deploying new security solutions. At a minimum, remote employees need the protection of antivirus/anti-malware and firewalls, multifactor authentication (MFA) solutions, and email security solutions that protect employees from spam and phishing attacks. You also can provide services, including patching and updating software and backup and disaster recovery (BDR) to keep applications safe and data accessible.

Build The Future Of Work

While employers discovered that the remote work model could be beneficial to their organizations, many employees also confirmed they prefer it. The Buffer 2022 State of Remote Work survey found that 62 percent of employees are more excited about their jobs since the shift to remote work, and 97 percent want to work remotely at least part-time for the remainder of their careers. Competing for top talent and building capable teams will require employers to offer the option to work from home.

VARs and MSPs can give their clients the infrastructure, communications, cloud solutions and services, and purpose-built hardware that provides the foundation for secure, productive remote work.

About The Author

Mike Majewski is the CEO at SEH Technology. He opened the SEH U.S. sales office in Phoenixville, PA, in 2002; three years later Mike became CEO of newly founded SEH Technology, a fully owned subsidiary of the German vendor SEH, a specialist in network printing solutions for more than 20 years. Mike also established the U.S. sales channel and subsequently managed all sales, distribution, and marketing activities for North America. Today, Mike is still responsible for all ongoing sales and marketing processes as well as technical relations with SEH’s OEM partners. To contact Mike, visit https://www.seh-technology.com/us/ or via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemajewski.