Regardless of what we might hear in the press, the wonderful world of hybrid and flexible work is here to stay. By most measures, our productivity is up, we enjoy a better work-life balance, and the technology that supports WFH is improving all the time.
However, technology can still falter. And as IT managers and support staff know all too well, remote work has challenges. When your staff is in multiple locations, using different work devices, and accessing corporate data, it can feel like looking after spinning plates – except those plates are set up around the globe.
The new guy's laptop won’t turn on. The HR manager just called with a blue screen of death. Seemingly no one can connect to the printer: in the office, you could just send someone to their desk a few floors away or have them stop by your help desk. But from an office at home, or wherever your teams have settled down to work, the help could be miles away, potentially in another county or, in some cases, always in another country.
In this day and age, remote work should also mean remote remedies. We don’t settle for any downtime in the office, and shouldn’t expect anything less at home. Luckily, the technology exists to make diagnosing and fixing most PC issues for remote workers as frictionless as working in the same building as their IT help desk.
Now, a blue screen of death doesn’t require a PC replacement, or mean your staff has to sit through a lengthy and involved remediation session with a frustrated IT manager. In fact, HP’s industry first Out-of-Band Diagnosis and Remediation capability gives HP support experts the ability to connect and remotely resolve up to 45% more issues that might cause a PC to fail, all while allowing employees to take phone calls, tackle other tasks, or simply take a break.
Houston, we no longer have a problem
Remote support isn’t a new concept – anyone who watched Apollo 13 should know this – but when something goes wrong with an employee’s PC, and there isn’t a quick and obvious fix they can apply, the PC usually gets sent back to the IT team. The remote worker is left without a laptop, either waiting for it to return fixed or having to use a replacement device while they wait. Both alternatives disrupt work for the employee and IT, causing frustration and productivity delays.
This traditional, reactive approach to remote support also has the potential to stop someone from hitting critical project deadlines or delivering an important presentation - because isn’t that when tech issues always seem to creep up? Or if your laptop is used to monitor other devices and systems in your company’s network – it then becomes a security issue, too.
Looking at it from the perspective of the IT department, it can become a waiting game; they’ll know the problem, and they will most likely have the fix in mind, but nothing can be done until the machine has been handed or shipped back to them. There’s a financial cost to packaging and shipping a laptop back and forth, and then a labor cost, adding a job to the IT department some time down the line.
It can be so much simpler. With HP’s Out-of-band Diagnosis and Remediation support capability, users with an Intel vPro-enabled PC can connect with IT support staff who can (with permission from the user) jointly control the machine’s mouse, keyboard, and or display to begin a diagnostic session – the user can end the session at any time by pressing SHIFT+ ESC or by disconnecting from the network for at least two minutes.
Out-of-band access allows HP, authorized support partners, and customers' IT help desks to remotely force power off, access the BIOS to run on device diagnostics, remotely determine issues at the firmware level, and fully remediate a range of common issues. What’s more, as of today, HP is the only provider of this level of remote remediation capability.
HP Support Services also includes other solutions that help you stay a step ahead by proactively protecting PCs with device health data monitoring, predictive alerts before the most common issues occur, and regularly scheduled checkups and repairs. These support capabilities also further the ability for fast and accurate remote diagnosis and remediation, as the support agent has hardware performance insights that can help them see what the likely issue is before they even speak to the user about a problem.
Constantly monitoring device health and efficiency is a great way to keep your fleet at its best and maintain employee uptime. Should the worst happen, however, and a remote remedy is not viable, you can also get confirmation of the issue without a physical inspection, and an HP technician can be scheduled to visit the employee’s remote location and fix it on-site.
Valuable support
There is no escaping the fact that your PC fleet is a critical business investment, and maintenance costs can also build up over time. Outsourcing support with HP Premium+ Support with Out-of-band Diagnosis and Remediation can help not only save a business time and money but also make both employees and IT happier and more productive.
HP calls this first-of-its-kind PC support capability a ‘hassle-free, virtual hand-off’. This advanced remote support service can diagnose and remediate complex PC issues, such as boot failures, reimaging, and or BIOS fixes. The tech giant states that its service can remotely resolve up to 45% more issues that might cause a PC to crash and or fail to reboot. And it does so with virtually no employee intervention or manual device repair.
You can rely on HP to provide support services that keep your work devices running at their best. The tech giant has three easy-to-buy options, from affordable basic onsite support to more advanced features like predictive insights and priority access to experts and parts – HP Essential Support, HP Premium Support, and HP Premium+ Support – with each tier including the option to select its new Out-of-Band Diagnosis and Remediation capability as an add-on feature.
For smaller businesses or those that are working on tight budgets, there are highly lucrative savings in a remote remediation service. For those with fewer staff numbers, or just a handful of IT specialists to call upon, the saving is time. Time back to do more important things and fully realize the benefits of hybrid work.
