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Don't Let the 2012 Olympics Have a Negative Impact on Your Business
As we all know, the 2012 London Olympic games is knocking at our doors. Now although Britain is hosting enough grand events this summer to make even the biggest naysayer proud to be British, August 3rd is also expected to be the most monstrous day for congested traffic in the history of London.
A modest waiting time of more than 30 minutes for boarding a train has been estimated by a recent report published by the TfL. The 22 venues for the Olympic games, as well as its surroundings will be crowded and special measures will be put in place to cope with the expected high increase in terms of traffic. Those measures would include: closure of side roads, banning turns, altering traffic light sequences, parking/loading suspensions, and suspending pedestrian crossings.
Aware that every solution will be welcome to reduce the traffic during these Olympic games, the TfL are suggesting to businesses a few ways in which they can combat the inevitable disturbance that the games will have on usual businesses operations. Things like persuading staff to work remotely (from home or from another location that isn't affected by the traffic), take a holiday (that would be great if they can afford it), or work longer hours are amongst some of the suggestions that have been put forward. I'm not going to get into the details of last two suggestions but, as you would have anticipated, I'll take this opportunity to have a look at working remotely.
Advising people to work remotely is easy to do, but how do you, as a business owner, enable your staff to do so? It's not too late to start implementing the move - even temporary - to cloud-based solutions. Think it'll cost you an arm and a leg? Think again. As an illustration, one e-mail box will only cost you just a small monthly fee on a pay-as-you-go basis. A serious provider should not charge to sign up, nor get you tied in to any long-term contracts.
But first of all, you have to identify how you want your staff to work remotely. Although you wouldn't want to move your core IT applications to the cloud the space of one week, chances are that you could do with some other "commodities" like e-mail to keep the wheels of your business turning - after all, one of the most crucial things to ensure while working remotely is to keep communications flowing. I'm sure your staff already has access to mobile phone communications. Now, you can also proceed similarly with your e-mail system by adopting a Hosted Exchange solution. This will allow your staff to access all their e-mails while being on-the-go, and from any internet-connected device. Not only that, but you will have access to all your business contacts within your email system - just incase you did forget that phone number.
Now, if you have some internal documents where some teams need to work on collaboratively, consider putting those documents on a Hosted SharePoint solution. Not only does it allow teams in multiple locations work on projects on a unified collaboration tools, but it also gives you a strong base for being more effective even though the Olympics is disturbing the traffic in town.
Just in case you think you can handle that Olympics 2012 traffic nightmare, just sit back a bit and look at how some similar, yet smaller event, have affected London: I'm of course referring to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. Just head out and talk to business owners that have their shop or offices near the venues where the Queen Jubilee's event took place. That event only took place over a weekend, now think of the Olympic games that will spread over multiple days, and you can be sure that you'll want a better solution that taking holidays.
Don't Let the 2012 Olympics Have a Negative Impact on Your Business
