More firms are virtualizing their workplaces: supporting employees working at home and on the road to cut costs, improve productivity, attract and keep top quality people, and become part of the environmental and traffic congestion solutions rather than fuel these problems.

 

The Telework Coalition estimates net gains of $10,000 to $20,000 per employee per year.

 

A new national survey by SupportIndustry.com sponsored by SupportSoft reveals that 78 percent of support executives said their organizations have seen, in turn, increasing demands to enable workers at locations outside the traditional office environments. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of respondents reported that they’re now supporting remote and mobile workers across a range of environments: satellite offices, home offices, and customer sites.

 

Yet these home and mobile staff need technical support to stay connected and productive and there lies the rub. While the technology has improved and that many firms have lessened the amount of unresolved support issues by requiring these employees to demonstrate a modicum of technical skills to troubleshoot problems, they still need remote support to meet their needs. Field support is more expensive and in some cases impractical for these workers.

 

More than one-third of respondents (34 percent) said their remote workers experience significantly more IT issues than do workers in centralized facilities. These matters are often different from that in those traditional locations, report 82 percent of surveyees. The leading problem is network access, with 85 percent citing it as a primary issue. Other top technical issues experienced by remote users include problems with passwords (58 percent), e-mail (56 percent), enterprise applications (41 percent), and system performance (36 percent).

 

These issues have not turned out to be deal killers for home/mobile work. None of the respondents cited complete dissatisfaction with their ability to address IT problems experienced by these workers. Significantly more than half (65 percent) said they were somewhat satisfied with their ability to support a remote workforce, meaning they could address some IT needs but not all.

 

There are emerging and proven remote support tools for these workers. Technologies include on-demand remote control and diagnostics, which have become the most valuable tools in a company’s service desk arsenal, used with chat or phone-based assistance. The solutions’ Software-as-a-Service (SaaS (News - Alert)) delivery can help the IT organization avoid the expense of installing and maintaining on-site software.

 

A number of respondents also said that they would like to see other functionality. These include improved ability to import remote trouble tickets into their centralized ticketing systems, to remote-control computers that aren’t powered up, and video conferencing.

 

Survey findings indicate that with the right tools there is a strategic opportunity for enterprises to gain competitive advantage and positively impact the environment by ensuring the performance and support needs of their remote employees are properly met. More than 33 percent say they intend to make additional investments in these solutions within the next two years.

 

“In a tightening economy, more and more enterprises are realizing they will lose out if they do not effectively support their remote and mobile workforce,” said Carolyn Healey, Publisher of SupportIndustry.com. “Hence they are turning to innovative support and service technologies that enable robust remote working, with the end results being lower company costs, happier and more productive employees, and a more environmentally friendly business structure.”

 

SupportSoft has recently released a new solution to help remote workers, Dynamic Agent, which provides do-it-yourself tech support. It supplies auto remediation of common problems so users do not have to call the help desks and establishes real-time triggers and alerts that enable just-in-time support. It also gives simple ‘1-click fixes’ so they can resolve their own issues with user-friendly ‘show me’, ‘tell me’, or ‘just do it for me’ content.

 

“Clearly, remote working presents the enterprise with considerable benefits, but it also brings a level of IT complexity that requires innovative tools to ensure optimum performance and support,” said Michael Sayer, general manager and executive vice president of the enterprise solutions group at SupportSoft. “In the current economic climate, we’re seeing a major shift in the way organizations are managing their IT operations, which is driving the adoption of advanced hosted solutions that focus on enhancing support, improving productivity and enabling efficiencies.”