Businesses in Derby are investing in technology which will allow staff to work from home as the coronavirus crisis deepens.
People who show symptoms - or have been in contact with those who may have coronavirus - have been told to self isolate.
In order for business to continue to function, some companies are investing in technology, which will allow staff who need to self-isolate to continue to work from home.
In Derby, among them is the Oberoi Business Hub, on Pride Park, which offers call handling services to a number of local companies.
Its owner, Kavita Oberoi, said she has invested in systems which will allow staff to “seamlessly” continue to work from home.
She said: “We can reassure both our clients and staff that we have invested in the systems to enable business continuity for them and us.
“We have already seen a huge increase in calls to specific clients whose services are affected by the outbreak.
“For example, those who provide cleaning, in particular industrial cleaning, are very much in demand.
Most Read
“We handle calls for a private hospital group whose patients are ringing to see if appointments are going ahead and similarly for charities dealing with patients concerned about the coronavirus.
“Interestingly, there has been a massive surge for one of our clients which loans out gym equipment because their clients are concerned their usual gyms will be closing.
“Our staff have dealt brilliantly with a 70 per cent increase in calls to those companies and are ensuring business continuity.
More stories about Derbyshire SMEs
“They all work in our office in Derby but we realised that they need the option to work from home if our service is to be maintained, so we invested in an extended system and technology.
“It means we can also react positively if other companies need a back-up system in place. All they need is the flick of a switch to pass calls over to our highly trained team.”
A Derby company that has seen a spike in companies wanting to boost their work-from-home capacity in order to protect their productivity is IT solutions firm RDS Global.
Based in Friar Gate, the firm has recorded a rise in clients wanting help in ramping up their information technology resources and abilities to work from home.
Don’t miss
Chief executive Andy Flinn said: “Businesses are thinking about how they are going to cope. The key aspect is home-working and business disaster recovery (DR).
“Businesses may be put in a position where they are still going to want to operate, but staff may well not be able to attend the premises. It’s about making sure key employees and team members can still work.”
An example of being able to connect from home is a VPN (Virtual Private Network), which allows staff to log in to their company’s corporate resources while away from the office.
Want more business news straight to your inbox?
BusinessLive is your home for business news from around the country - and you can stay in touch with all the latest news through our email alerts.
You can sign up to receive morning news bulletins from every region we cover and to weekly email bulletins covering key economic sectors from manufacturing to technology and enterprise. And we'll send out breaking news alerts for any stories we think you can't miss.
Visit our email preference centre to sign up to all the latest news from BusinessLive.
Mr Flinn said that more and more businesses are taking up cloud services to ensure continuity, and companies are also looking to expand their bandwith so that staff can still perform their duties from home.
He said: “We have definitely got to the point where businesses could be affected. If people are having to go into self-isolation, it doesn’t mean they can’t work, it just means they can’t interact in the workplace.
“One customer had a piece of machinery being built in China but that’s been delayed, so the customer has now put this money into IT expenditure instead - and that makes good sense, because embracing new technology and cloud in conjunction with a DR plan can definitely reduce the risk to business.”
More tech stories from across Derbyshire
Mr Flinn said that his own company had been preparing for any fall-out from the virus.
He said: “We have been able to put a complete solution in place where we can be in or out of the office.
“All of our workforce has the capacity to operate as home-workers or remote workers – and we are ready to step up our plan as requirements dictate.”