The Rise and Evolution of Remote Desktop Software
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Providing effective “on-demand” technical assistance and support often involves not only one’s personal IT knowledge and experience, but also a reliable set of technical products that help get the job done.
The rise and evolution of remote desktop software has enabled IT businesses of all sizes to deliver immediate “incident resolution” to their clients and colleagues located anywhere in the world, while eliminating geographical distances, national borders, and other constraints that were at play only 15 years ago. Such products play an essential role in improving the overall bottom line of any freelance IT business by excluding various costs associated with time consuming on-site visits.
The recent years have delivered a significant expansion of the remote desktop software industry, and today a business of any size is able to choose from a number of various remote desktop products based on its own budget and functionality requirements. As the owner of a small IT company, I am able to share my personal experience regarding the evolution of browser-based remote desktop software as an alternative to VNC-based products that dominated the market only several years ago.
Rediscovering Your Freelance Fire
It’s inevitable that as your career grows as a freelancer, your expertise and work patterns will change. And while this evolution is a natural part of your professional growth, sometimes the freelance life—as great as it is—can be a little draining.
Your career can be thriving but you may run into times when you feel burned out or “stuck.” You know you’re on the right path, but somehow you don’t know where to go next. Or you may feel like the spark is gone. Experts will tell you that a break—or an actual vacation—is in order. But there’s another way to liven things up and rejuvenate yourself: rediscover your freelance fire. Here are some techniques I’ve used to get out of a rut.
5 Remote Support Tools for Small Business
In today’s increasingly competitive business environment, there is tremendous pressure on organizations to offer quick and effective customer support. This is not only an important approach to achieving a high level of customer satisfaction, but also a way to potentially cut time spent on dealing with problems that could otherwise be solved in a quick and organized manner. As a self-employed entrepreneur competing in the IT industry, I’ve come to realize that the most effective and time-saving way to deal with most of my customers’ issues is by offering remote support.
Providing technical support from the comfort of the office allows me to resolve nearly 80% of all technical issues encountered, and subsequently saves the time and money which would otherwise be spent on going on-site to tend to minor issues such as updating a customer’s settings or installing required software onto their machines. Clearly, not all issues could be resolved remotely and on-site visits are still required ever so often; however, the use of remote desktop software has clearly reduced my costs and increased customer satisfaction due to the quick response time.
9 Tools to Keep You in Sync With Clients and Colleagues
These days the idea of a design team is usually wide open to location. Your creative director could be in LA while the designers work in New York, and the client lives in Texas. To keep in sync and get all the work done on time, I’ve found that I can’t work without certain tools. Here’s a small list of applications and websites that aid collaboration over long distances that and are either free or very affordable.
1. Google Site Apps
Many of you with your own domain may not realize the amazing potential of Google Apps for domain owners. If you run a team or just freelance yourself, you could gain tremendously from setting up a free account. First off, instead of that horrible web mail your host either provides for or charges you for, you could get Gmail and its storage for free. Yes, thats right, and it’s personally branded. There are different options, but if you’re under 100 employees, its straight-up free.
You also get a useful start page (such as start.mydomain.com) that you can use as a login point for clients or employees. Like iGoogle, you have widgets that can be added to the page. Your far left-side is locked for things you want all those logging in to see. For example, a calendar to keep track of deadlines and meetings, or the RSS feed of a production blog. You can even have your inbox on the startup page.
Starting a Remote Business, Remotely
I’ve written numerous times about remote working, including how remote working works for freelancers and how freelancers can overcome the daily challenges of working remotely. In this post, I’ll be talking about how I’ve launched a web design studio remotely.
Why do it?
Us freelancers love working for ourselves. We like the thrills of deadlines and chasing work. A common problem we face is that our services are not always scalable, as many of us are billing by the hour and we can only ‘get out’ what we put in. By establishing a business, I can take on a managerial position and spend more time making important decisions than sweating hours–but only if that’s what I want.
There’s a nice balance here, as I can still do as much work as I like but I never feel I have to. It’s still a freelance arrangement, as all clients are remote and the business is a collection of freelance and part-time staff, but is managed in such a way that it provides 24 x 7 service. That’s the first lesson: you can continue to enjoy everything you love about freelancing if you establish your business with a freelance business model.
Making Remote Working Work Each Day
After nearly five months, I’m now convinced: remote working is the best working arrangement I’ve ever had.
Living in different cities, finding inspiration in a constantly changing environment and always meeting new people sure is sweet. It’s not without challenges though, and my Remote Working Works for Freelancers post lead to some interesting questions.
How do you find accommodation? How do you manage client demands? How do you find work? I’ve taken the time to answer these questions–plus a few others–to help other aspiring freelancers make remote working a success.
18 Travel Tips for International Freelancers
Your international freelancing dream just came true.
Your Dublin underground music blog vibrated with Rolling Stone and now they want to send you on tour with U2 in Japan. Your underwater photographs of Sweetpea the alligator excited National Geographic and now you’re on your way to Easter Island for a month. Your Bollywood gossip column has Entertainment Tonight calling to arrange an on-air interview in Hollywood tomorrow!
You may be good at what you do as a freelancer, but how good are you at international traveling?
Voyaging ever since I was a glint in my father’s eye, I’m here to tell you some career-saving international travel tips. Continue Reading
