It is perfectly natural to run into teething problems when opening a new branch office. Anything that prevents you from being up and running on the first day is not ideal.
This checklist will help you plan what needs to be in place to ensure that IT is not the source of any problems.
Phone line and broadband
Even if the branch office never receives a customer call, a phone line is vital for keeping communications flowing between head office and the remote site. The first few days will be a frenzy – and your team needs to know that they have the support they need at the end of the phone.
An active broadband connection is equally important, ensuring that employees have access to email and company files. Otherwise productivity will be even lower than expected because workers cannot use the applications and tools they need to do their jobs properly.
The phone line needs to be installed, and broadband activated before the new office opens. Activating ‘on the day’ inevitably leads to delays on day one.
Phone system
If your business operates a switchboard with internal extensions, you will need to consider how to make that functionality available to remote users. If you use an on-site PBX, you will need to find a way to extend connectivity beyond head office.
If you use a hosted switchboard, you need to ensure that you have the correct number of licenses, extensions and handsets to cover all of the workers.
Computing infrastructure is in place
As well as making sure that PCs are set up on desks, you also need to ensure that the supporting network infrastructure is in place. In addition to the internet router and firewall systems, you will need network switches to allow computers to ‘talk’ to each other – and the structured network cabling that links everything together.
Again, everything needs to be in place, configured and running before the office opens, so that your employees need do nothing more than sit at their desks and switch on their PCs.
Help is at hand for your branch office
A new office set up is a serious logistical undertaking. On top of the IT factors, you also need to deal with the office itself, the workers, utilities, furniture and more. IT set-ups are a specialist task, and it makes sense to partner with a provider to whom you can outsource every detail of the operation.
As well as ensuring that all of the tasks detailed above are completed, an IT specialist like Broadband Cloud Solutions can operate in parallel to your operations, freeing your employees to concentrate on their duties. So when you need everything up and running from 9am on day one, a third party IT specialist has your back.
To learn more about office move services, or for assistance in kitting out your new branch office, please get in touch.
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