March 14, 2020

Statement to Our Clients Regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19)

The health and safety of our clients and our team members is always our utmost concern. During these increasingly anxious and uncertain times, this is especially true with the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). We also know that you rely on your technology and the services we provide to continue your business operations. We are here to serve you and I wanted to share information with you about steps we are taking to protect our clients and team members.

• We continue to monitor developments around the COVID-19 outbreak and are following the guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization as well as our local health officials.
• We have implemented guidelines that instruct team members who experience cold or flu-like symptoms to stay home. If deemed appropriate, team members can perform work from home tasks.
• We have provided our team members with the CDC’s guidelines for hand washing, and have a copy posted in our office space.
• We have provided hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies in our office space.
• We are cleaning all high traffic or high touch surfaces daily with CDC recommended cleaning products. Each day, we are also cleaning desk phones, cell phones, laptops, tablets, keyboards and computer mice with CDC and/or manufacturer recommended cleaning products.
• Any international travel plans have been postponed until further notice.
• Any travel within the United States will be closely evaluated and would only be approved if the trip is not to a high-risk area and is absolutely necessary.

Supporting Our Clients

We understand how important your technology systems and services are to you and the success of your business. We have taken or are taking the following steps to ensure we continue to support your technology systems and services:

• We have reviewed the inventory of critical systems we use to provide and deliver our services to you. We have confirmed that all the critical systems we use to provide and deliver our services can be interacted with remotely, should a need arise.
• We have reached out to our upstream partners to understand their response to COVID-19 and remain in close communication with them to learn of any changes.
• We are reviewing the inventory of client systems that could need routine maintenance in the near future and are reviewing how we will provide needed maintenance should a wide area quarantine develop.
• We are reviewing how we respond to client equipment failures and emergency service calls that require a site visit should a wide area quarantine develop.

We Stand Ready to Help

Should you prefer we not visit your site, most common issues and administration tasks can be taken care of remotely. Should an unplanned issue arise, please let us know if you would like us to handle it remotely.
If you are considering, actively exploring or are implementing remote work/telecommuting practices, we have a variety of communication and collaboration tools available to support remote or mobile workers. You may also be facing cancelled meetings due to travel bans, restrictions or reductions. We can help with this as well.
 

• Cloud Voice and Elevate phone services – your team members can take their office phone with them. By simply connecting your Cloud Voice or Elevate phone to an internet connection, all calls can be placed or received anywhere. Cloud Voice and Elevate subscribers can also activate the Follow Me service and forward all calls to any other number they have access to.
• ShareSync and Office Apps – your team members can access their files anywhere and on any device with ShareSync and can edit them and collaborate in real time with Office Apps.
• Online Meeting – your team members can connect with each other, customers and vendors with our video conferencing and collaboration app.
• VPN and Remote Desktop – connect to the systems inside your office through a secure Virtual Private Network connection.

Should you have any questions around remote worker options or continuity plans, please let us know. We are ready to assist you in identifying options and supporting implementation.
We are privileged to serve you and our commitment is to continue bringing you the services and support you rely on. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to assist you, your team members and their families. Our thoughts are with those who are affected by the coronavirus.

Matt Kiolbassa, Founder and Principal Technologist