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Creating A Virtual Office?

Posted by Cliff on from the cheaper-than-the-brick-and-mortar-version dept.

Fubar asks: "My small company of 10 employees is considering letting our lease run out on our office space and is thinking about having everyone work from home (or wherever they want). I have been tasked with putting a plan together to provide voice and data connectivity to each employee. What sort of solutions have you implemented?" I'm considering the following for providing voice service:

+ Order an extra analog line for each employee
+ Reimburse each employee for a second line on their cell phones
+ Host our current phone system in my home office, add a VoIP card and provide an endpoint for each employee
+ Use third-party VoIP hosting service" What options have you used to create a virtual office, and what suggestions would might you give to anyone else attempting to do the same?

3 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Options? by nacturation · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What options have you used to create a virtual office, and what suggestions would might you give to anyone else attempting to do the same? My advice: don't. If you're looking to cut costs, find some cheaper office space elsewhere. You lose a lot more by having everyone isolated than you'd gain on the bottom line.
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    1. Re:Options? by DieNadel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      We actually have a solution that works like a charm: our bug-tracking and development-request system shows all the tasks that are the responsibility of a developer, and it counts down the days to each task's expiration date.

      When the expiration date is 10 business days away, the task becomes yellow colored. 5 days away, and it becomes red. 2 days, and you'll find it black colored. With this setting, it's really easy for our manager to visually check how the group is performing (we have groups ranging from 5 to 30 developers).

      If you miss the deadline to often, your manager calls you up and sets a meeting to question your performance. Perform too poorly, and you're history :-)

      It looks simple, and it is. The developer can do whatever s/he wants, we really don't care, as long as her/his tasks are being dealt with AND our QA team isn't finding too many bugs on her/his implementations and fixes.

      Oh, and in case you're wondering, we use (argh) Lotus Notes for task control.

      --
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  2. Switching to Home Offices may be a bad idea. by What+the+Frag · · Score: 4, Interesting

    First of all, consider to rent a cheaper place.

    Personally, I don't like having my whole office at home. In my case it's not about children or other sources of noises but I don't feel "at work" sitting in front of my PC. I would require a separate (and quite) working room to be productive.

    Continuing with noises - if some employees have a quick question they'll call each other. This may be very disturbing.

    Next, consider putting in cost for connectivity. Not only phone lines and a phone server, you will need a central VPN server to share files.

    Then, think about security. You don't have any control about the employees PCs anymore. I could bet that there are an easy target for malware. Think about that the computers may be used by other people, like their kids. Don't wait for a "Cool I ownz sensitive data of that company - letz put on myspace to show how coolz I am!" to happen.

    Last point is, where to meet up with customers? Tell them you not have an office and meet at Starbucks?

    Seriously, have a look around for a cheaper office.