Working from Home in the Time of COVID-19: How to Make the Leap

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As the call for social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grow, workplaces are being uprooted and employees transitioned to remote locations. This adjustment to working remotely can be trying for employees, especially those used to a more physically collaborative environment. But with help from Comstor and Cisco, collaboration and business continuity can be fully supported.

Below we’ve captured a selection of helpful Cisco updates, insights, and best practices for Comstor partners as the workforce moves toward telework. Here are insights that Cisco thought leaders share on the matter:

Cisco Data Center Makes It Easier to Ramp Up and Support your New Remote Workers

To help their customers address the new IT demands and challenges resulting from increased teleworking teams, Cisco is providing a set of data center offerings that will help customers manage and rapidly expand their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). This offer includes a new, pre-configured HyperFlex bundle with prioritized shipping, and free Intersight management for 180 days.

Cisco is helping customers meet the new challenges of ramping and supporting remote workers and delivering the user experience those remote workers need. “Supporting our customers through challenging times is our highest priority,” wrote Kaustubh Das, Vice President, Product Management at Cisco. “As we navigate this together, rest assured that Cisco will do what it can to help minimize disruption for you and to enable your employees to stay connected.”

Learn more here.

Workplace Experiences: How Remote Work is Transforming the Workplace

Sandeep Mehra, Vice President and General Manager of Webex Rooms and Telepresence at Cisco, wrote an article about the various ways that telework is changing the way teams work together and the benefits that come when team members are able to collaborate from anywhere. “The one thing I can say with certainty is that the workplace of the future isn’t a specific place — it’s where you are at any given time, whether that’s a home office, coffee shop or an office building,” he said. “We’re already seeing this shift become pervasive.”

Mehra expanded on the importance of seamless connection and flexibility in this workplace transformation and how tools like Webex Rooms can make these goals a reality across an increasingly remote workforce.

Read his whole take here.

Cisco Announces “Work from Home” Webex Contact Center Quick Deployment

In response to the massive increase in the teleworking community, Cisco is announcing a quick-to-deploy solution to get organizations’ virtual customer contact centers up and running quickly. According to an update from Omar Tawakol, Vice President and General Manager of the Cisco Contact Center business unit, a secure, scalable, native cloud solution for businesses with up to 1,000 concurrent agents can be deployed on the Webex Contact Center in as little as five days.

“The solution includes agents and supervisor software, PSTN for inbound calls, and a robust set of omni-channel, routing and reporting capabilities – everything needed to successfully run a virtual contact center,” wrote Tawakol. “Because it’s a cloud solution, it supports contact center agents that need to work from home, regardless of endpoints or physical location.”

Read about this option here.

10 Tips to Keep Remote Work Moving

Lorrissa Horton, Vice President and General Manager of Webex Teams in the Team Collaboration Group (TCG) at Cisco, shared a few best practices regarding the working from home transition that she’s refined throughout her remote working experience.

Some of them include:

  • Use flexible modern tools: “I use Webex Teams to enable me to make and receive voice and video calls, join meetings, send messages to individuals and teams I work with, share files and more. I can use it on my PC/Mac, but I also use it on my smartphone when I am out and about.”
  • Get organized: “I can organize related conversations into teams (either actual organizational units or project teams). This is a useful concept, as remote working lends itself to more flexible, agile team assignments, meaning you can be assigned to any number of virtual teams.”
  • Don’t forget the little things matter: “As a leader of a remote team, I take time to recognize good work to keep people motivated and engaged. This can range from calling out an individual’s achievements in a team meeting or a 1:1, to adding a comment, a GIF, or an emoji reaction to something a team member has posted in a Webex Teams space.”

Read all 10 tips here.

You can read more about effectively managing telework with Cisco’s help here.

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