Pivoting to a Virtual IT Support Model for Fully Remote Teams
BACKGROUND:
2020 will forever be remembered as a year of disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses were faced with many problems – the first being that all personnel were forced into a remote work arrangement. Almost overnight, the technical infrastructure and support needs transformed.
Fortunately, WHIM had already outfitted all users with laptops and provided security and remote collaboration tools training. A technical support portal for request submission and a self-service knowledge base was also already in place. Nonetheless, new requirements for at-home workstations, remote onboarding/offboarding, remote technical support, and remote monitoring of all network and application infrastructure needed to be met quickly. Therefore, architecture and technical support processes were needed to fully support a distributed team and create efficiencies for an uncertain time.
GOALS:
- Meet team members’ work station needs both at home and at the office.
- Boost end user training to fully utilize remote collaboration tools
- Provide technical support and training regardless of team member location
RESULTS:
Whim equipped DRP team members with the tools and skills they needed to quickly and successfully transition to a remote working environment while significantly reducing support and infrastructure costs over time.
- Full migration from local domain and servers to cloud architecture
- Advanced training and support for remote collaboration tools
- Flexible and responsive technical onboarding/offboarding procedures
- Workstation asset (monitors, docks, keyboards, mice, and cables) acquisition and management for home office use
- Extended employee home network support, training, and security recommendations
- Reduction of total helpdesk by approximately 50% between Q1 and Q4
- Reduction of overall managed service costs by approximately 30%