@Home Remote Working

IT Challenges of Remote Working

Covid-19 compelled companies to restructure IT operations to support employees who were required to work from home, offering effectively a new “one-equipped-office-per-employee” working environment. Naturally, traditional IT support services had never been designed for this kind of decentralized IT management.

Subsequently, a trend has developed, such that in 2022 GTS’ enterprise clients continue to support remote staff comprising on average 70% of their employee base.

Origin of GTS @Home Services Depot

In March 2020 clients asked GTS to stand up overnight an employee support network to supply at-home IT services for thousands of client employees. In the months following, GTS delivered more than 2 million pieces of technology and PPE equipment.

Fortunately, right from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, GTS was classified as an “essential business” by Federal Government clients as well as by major public companies – an edge that turned out to be mission-critical. Even during the Georgia-mandated lockdown, GTS stayed open and fully operational, enabling execution of rapid-fire mobilization on behalf of client staff across the entire country.

Thus within 48 hours GTS was able to create for the client a turn-key solutions for real-time inventory management as well as logistics solutions to distribute PPE sourced by the client supply chain group.

In summary, within 90 days GTS deployed client IT assets in 62,500 individual boxes in addition to 2 million units of PPE materials.

Out of all these efforts, the GTS @Home Services Depot (“GTS @Home”) emerged and today remains a fully staffed and active division of Global Technology Services Group.

Practical Solutions

On-Boarding

This service provides new hires as well as interns with individually imaged and configured asset-tagged PCs, together with homedelivery of accessory “bundles” that can include monitor, cabling, docking station, printer, and keyboard/mouse.

Off-Boarding

This service deals with employees who leave the company for various reasons.
• Changed position within the company
• Left the company of own accord
• Laid off due to business conditions

GTS @Home recovers and recycles serviceable assets from off-boarded employees as well as destroying confidential data to stringent NIST & NISPROM standards, either by erasure or magnetic degaussing or even mechanically shredding hard drives. Recovered and serviceable current life cycle IT assets can then be re-deployed, thus reducing future capital expenditures. Further, GTS @Home liaises with client HR to ensure equipment on “litigation hold” is returned immediately to HR.

Break-Fix

This GTS @Home service addresses the issue of home-working employees encountering equipment failures of the kind that would previously have been dealt with internally by IT staff.

Each served employee has hot-line access to call in a support ticket to GTS @Home, triggering a same-day response for next-day home delivery of replacement equipment. The failed equipment is then returned to GTS in the same box to be either repaired for future redeployment or recycling, depending on the nature of the failure.

Logistics

This GTS @Home service covers Onboarding, Off-Boarding and Break-Fix requirements and includes real-time reporting to the parent company of asset failure and replacement details as well as determination of end-of-life status according to client criteria. Logistics service also includes “non-returned equipment” reports to the employer.

Additionally, GTS @Home offers white-glove reverse logistics services recovering IT assets from corporate and regional offices to maximize the ROI on assets remaining at corporate offices during either the Covid-19 pandemic or the permanent closure for any reason of corporate and/or regional offices.

Mobility

This GTS @Home service covers portable devices and offers services that include:
• Capture IMEI / MEID + related deactivation
• SIM card cancellation
• Cancellation of software licenses

Value Recovery

This GTS @Home service deals with managing surplus assets recovery for restocking and eventual re-use. Alternatively, according to client specifications, below-water-line status of returned assets can be determined and secure disposal can be handled safely through the R2-Certified recycling process.

Corporate Refresh

This service deals with GTS @Home execution of periodic corporate refresh decisions that involve deployment of large volumes of IT assets to 1000s of home-based employees.

Data Destruction

This service can be combined with Off-Boarding and Break-Fix or offered as a stand-alone service. GTS @Home has many years of fault-free experience with both MIL-standard NIST 800.88 data destruction as well as licensed zerolandfill IT asset destruction.

Consumables

This service involves GTS @Home Services warehouse storage and deployment of consumables required by home-office employees, who have online secure access to order toner, labels, batteries and any other office product regularly required by employees working from home.

Asset Inventory Management

This service addresses the growing need of enterprise clients and large government agencies, who have requested secure warehouse storage and real-time management of IT assets that previously had been stored at corporate HQ or regional offices now impacted by the Covid-19 crisis.

From its own HQ in metro Atlanta, GTS @Home offers online inventory management control, updated in real time with total parent company visibility of inventory levels.