Beating the blizzards

Thursday 14 January 2010

RECENT severe snowstorms and icy weather meant that thousands of office workers were unable to get into work.

Business experts reckon the Arctic temperatures could have cost Britain’s economy up to £690million a day as staff lost the battle to beat the weather into work – or didn’t bother in the first place.

And bosses who docked pay and holidays were accused of needlessly adding to their business woes by creating resentment among staff.

Having the right tools to allow staff to work from home makes life a lot simpler, as Rob Hamilton, director of specialist Aberdeen IT company Dynamic Edge Solutions, found out.

He was happy to be stuck at home in snowy Drumoak knowing his staff and clients were being taken care of.

His firm delivers state-of-the-art cloud-computing solutions for north-east companies which gives desktop PC and mobile computing users access to their software and data securely via the internet, meaning they can work from anywhere, at any time, using the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS).

BPOS was launched worldwide by Microsoft in May last year and Dynamic Edge was the first company in Scotland to be certified by Microsoft to deliver its online services solution.

The service proved its worth during the winter mayhem.

Despite being unavoidably detained at home in Blackburn through school closures, and with three daughters aged seven, five and one, Rob’s technical manager, Julie Hulcup, still managed to fully support key client Norson Power.

Julie, 32, should have been working on site at Norson’s East Tullos premises but, thanks to BPOS and remote support tools, she was able to support its infrastructure remotely from her own home.

The system also allowed Norson personnel who were unable to get into work due to the heavy snow and icy conditions to access e-mail, data and files to ensure that the company continued to deliver a full service.

“The solution we provide means you can always do the work. Even if you can’t be in the office, you always have access to all company data,” said Rob.

“In Drumoak, I was working on customer IT systems completely remotely, and even if I want to have a face-to-face meeting, I can launch the video-conferencing facility. I can do that with up to 250 people at one time, so everything can be overcome.

“Situations like we have had recently, with up to 50% of staff not making it into work or taking as much as two or three days off because of the weather, have a real detrimental effect on your business.

“But having a solution like this in place, project workers and staff can all connect with, see and instant-message each other in real time – it’s effectively like sitting in your office with them.”