Virtual Working

The new world of business lets you work with anyone, anywhere

Today's small businesses don't have to restrained by geography. No problem if your client is Inverness and you're based in Brighton. More and more businesses are making use of technology to collaborate virtually with colleagues, contractors and clients.

Place-free working: the new world of business

Andrew Corbett, director of Shropshire-based Perfect Arc (www.perfectarc.com) says: “The idea of ‘place’ is disappearing - effective communication and immediacy of response means a few minutes can be the difference between getting the next job or one of your competitors snatching it from under your nose.” Agility and responsiveness are everything, so travel time is a real drain.

Furthermore, the tools which help to eliminate travelling have improved, allowing for true remote collaboration. “Traditionally remote communication was one to one - e.g. a phone call or an email. More organisations are realising the importance of shared communications - online whiteboards, conference calls and file-sharing systems like SharePoint. This enables you to get closer to your employees and customers by fostering an information culture.”

A real-life, virtual example

Andrew continues: “PerfectArc Ltd is currently completing a substantial project for a company whose HQ is in Germany - we have completed most of the development including twice weekly “meetings” with people in three countries and have yet to meet any of the client staff face to face - the meetings are facilitated using remote desktop control and conference calls including people working from home or on the road who can be ‘pulled in’ to an ongoing conference by our outward-dialling digital exchange.

Virtual working options

A good place to start your virtual crusade is Instant Messenger (IM). This isn’t just loved by teens, students and techies: if you want someone to get hold of you wherever and whenever, and to be able to communicate in ‘real time’ effectively, then IM could be for you. Andrew Corbet again: “For some time we have used LiveMessenger and LiveMeeting inside our office. Whether someone is at the next desk or at home, you don’t perceive any drop in the quality of the conversation.”

LiveMeeting is more advanced, allowing the real-time conversations of IM with the added business benefit of shared presentations, demonstrations and the display of files.

Online, offline and on the road, there are now also plenty of tools to replicate the experience of being in the office wherever you are. Andrew Corbet says: “For sharing documents and diaries, Microsoft SharePoint and Groove work together for combined online and offline working.” SharePoint allows you to create powerful online workspaces. Groove syncs up your laptop with SharePoint libraries so that they can be used offline too. “By using Windows Mobile, we are able to sync up materials on our office Exchange server to our phones too.” If you don’t already have (or want) the expense of your own Exchange server, there’s a hosted option too. “Many suppliers offer a hosted Exchange server for virtual workgroups and this provides a very rapid setup of a virtual office system without the overhead of knowing how to configure and maintain your own Exchange server”.

Does virtual working really work?

Smart bosses want talent- wherever it is; and virtual working tools attract the best. For a final salutary example, it’s back to Andrew Corbet: “One of our programmers is currently cycling the length of South America for charity and has requested that when he gets back in a couple of months we allow him to return to South America and work for us from there. Considering he was already 150 miles from us working from home, the only effect we will notice will be that he clocks on and off at different times than before.”