SOTI Assist Groups: Helping IT Staff and Remote Workers Stay Productive

From the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, 90% of global organizations have encouraged or required their employees to work remotely. This represents the biggest workplace culture shift since the concept of the 9-to-5 workday took root in the 1980s.

There was no real warning, either. Overnight, it seems, IT departments and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) were scrambling to build an effective remote work infrastructure. It was not easy:

• 36% of businesses were not prepared to make the immediate shift to remote work.

• 29% of businesses were still dealing with technology issues months after the first wave of the pandemic.

• 61% of IT leaders did not have confidence in their ability to deliver a satisfactory digital experience to their workforce.

The sudden shift to remote work provided a myriad of challenges for both organizations and their employees. But, there was one common concern which stood out.

Newly Remote Workers Had Challenges Getting Tech Support Because IT Departments Couldn’t Provide It

When the world first shut down due to COVID-19 and employees were directed to work remotely, an astounding 49% had never done so.

Whereas before, whenever these employees experienced a problem with their devices, they would just walk over to their IT department, 19% of newly remote workers now had to navigate a help desk system and other guidelines they were unfamiliar with.

For example:

• 45% of rookie remote workers did not receive any training on cybersecurity protection and how to engage their organization in case of a breach.

• 53% say none of the personal devices they use for work are administered or managed by their employer.

• 33% of employees say that IT response during COVID-19 is either average or below average.

That second point is critical. In essence, it says remote employees are left on their own should their personal device – and the business-critical data on it – become compromised. And should they need routine assistance on something like a faulty app (keep in mind, 10% of organizations state that any downtime for a high priority app is intolerable), they have no way of asking for or receiving that assistance.

It isn’t much easier for the people responsible for delivering remote support as they now have to account for things like:

• Supporting the shift to remote work without impacting business operations: Help desk teams need to ensure all remote employees have access to the devices and apps required to continue working.

• Supporting more endpoints than ever before: Approximately 56% of remote workers are using their personal computers for work purposes during COVID-19, while worldwide smartphone usage has jumped 70% since the pandemic began. Additionally, 70% of workers who used office printers regularly are continuing to print corporate documents at home.

The biggest challenge for help desk staff is trying to understand and resolve a complex issue when they are not able to see it right in front of them. Remote employees may not be technical enough to confidently explain the problems they’re experiencing, and IT agents may not be equipped to adequately or verbally guide the user through the steps required to resolve it.

SOTI Assist: Helping Your Remote Workers Stay Productive

Remote work is here to stay, as an estimated 25% to 30% of workers will continue to work outside of the office multiple days a week by the end of 2021.

That means both workers and IT staff need a support system that helps them communicate, troubleshoot, and resolve issues quickly and efficiently.

Enter SOTI Assist, which is part of the SOTI ONE Platform.

SOTI Assist is tailor-made for the remote work era – both at home, and in the field – wherever business-critical operations take place across a company’s mobile operations. For help desk agents, it allows them to remotely view and control any mobile device screen – such as a smartphone or tablet – for any operating system (OS) and any device usage scenario:

• BYOD: Bring Your Own Device.

• COPE: Corporately Owned, Personally Enabled.

• COBO: Corporately Owned, Business Only.

With SOTI Assist, tech support can see what the end user sees and view rich device details such as battery life, memory usage, deployed apps, storage capacity and more. And it’s all done anytime and anywhere.

For remote workers, SOTI Assist removes the frustration involved with trying to describe a device issue over the phone. It provides the same peace of mind and convenience of physically bringing a problematic device to the IT department.

And with SOTI Assist Groups, it’s even easier for IT staff to deliver the critical support remote workers need to minimize downtime and stay productive.

What is SOTI Assist Groups?

For every 10 workers, approximately four can work remotely. Of course, this depends on the industry.

Using that statistic for a company of 1,000 employees, COVID-19 abruptly forced 400 of them to telecommute from home. It also means IT staff unexpectedly had 400 more remote workers – in all sorts of roles, using all sorts of devices and throughout all sorts of locations – to support.

And although their remote support client base grew 40% almost overnight, a feature like SOTI Assist Groups would help IT manage them all.

With SOTI Assist Groups, IT departments and managed service providers (MSPs) can segregate incidents by teams, departments, business units or customers to manage and resolve incident tickets more effectively.

In other words, you can group those 400 newly remote workers in any configuration which best suits the needs of your business.

Benefits include:

• Strict segregation which ensures confidential information from one department is never exposed to another.

• Establishment of rock-solid workflow settings and service level agreements (SLAs) per group.

• Better visibility into issue management by all impacted parties: help desk agents, end users, department leaders and managers.

For large organizations, SOTI Assist Groups lets you delegate responsibilities per group. For example, you can assign one help desk agent to handle issues impacting the “retail” group and another individual to tackle the “transportation and logistics” group.

SOTI Assist Groups simplifies how tickets and incidents are managed. Suddenly, those 400 extra devices and workers to account for doesn’t seem so daunting.

Contact Us for More Info

Remote work is the new normal. Which means supporting devices remotely is also the new normal.

The SOTI ONE Platform ensures you have the tools and technology needed to manage, secure and support remote devices, even if you’re working at home from your kitchen table.

Want to learn more? Here’s how:

• Contact us with any questions you have about the SOTI ONE Platform or SOTI Assist specifically.

• Request a free demo and see how the SOTI ONE Platform gives you total control over your business-critical mobile operations.

• Start a free 30-day trial and take the SOTI ONE Platform for a test drive with absolutely zero obligations.