With the end of another year in-sight now is the perfect time to plan your December and New Year IT provision. After so many months of working from home we are all quite used to working remotely and independently but it is worth having a plan in place for the festive period, especially as there may be times when all of your team are enjoying some time off.
Office closure
If your offices will be closed or running different hours over Christmas and New Year here are our key points to consider.
+ Use your website and social media to let customers know about opening changes well in advance.
+ Add Christmas opening times to your email footers for all staff so that they are automatically sent to customers and suppliers. It is possible to set up a universal footer and email signature so that they are uniform.
+ Ask your staff to set their ‘Out of Office’ – consider supplying a template so that everyone’s reads the same.
Staff Support
+ Make sure that everyone knows who is available to support them over Christmas. Especially if people aren’t physically coming into the office – who else is working and will be available to help them if problems or questions arise?
+ If IT issues arise who can they call on? If you are already a 2.0 customer our helpline is open over Christmas (except for bank holidays when we will be checking emails periodically) .
Business systems
+If your telephone system allows record an out of office or Christmas message to play across the system.
+If your system still requires manual back-ups? Is this covered over Christmas? If you have an on-site server room make sure that the right people have access over the closed period. Is there a spare key or password holder available?
+ Make sure your data is safe – cyber security attacks rise over the Christmas period because criminals know they have more time to work unnoticed. If your cyber security needs improving, use the next few weeks to get everything in place.
Planning
If your business is usually quieter (or even closed) over the festive period this is a great time to plan ahead for your business.
Use the time without people in the office to upgrade or move equipment or even just arrange an audit of your current provision so that changes can be made early in the new year. Would your business benefit from a better network? More data storage? Improved cyber security?
If your business could benefit from some IT support for December and beyond please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
