By now, most of us are focused on putting the pandemic behind us and moving forward, but many organizations are still living with decisions they made during the abrupt shift to remote work – in the form of hastily adopted off-the-shelf solutions. These may have worked for short-term needs, but now disjointed point solutions are creating a lot of complication for IT, leaving substantial room for improvement.

The trend was widespread. IDG reports that 95% of U.S. organizations deployed off-the-shelf solutions to cope with short-term needs last year, and 84% of organizations globally reported the same. The good news is this solved an urgent problem: how to move an entire workforce from office-centric environments to remote work. But it created a few new problems: disjointed systems for admins to manage, increased exposure to cybersecurity risks, and tools that don’t scale with the speed of business.

If your IT team is in the same boat and are looking to consolidate, here are some ideas to consider:

1. Reduce IT complexity and headaches for your IT help desk by focusing on tools that are easy to use. If tools are easier for employees to use, that’s fewer calls coming into IT. And if tools are easier for IT teams to use, support sessions are that much smoother.
2. Consolidate remote access, support, and endpoint management so it’s easier for admins to manage. Having one vendor as your partner streamlines processes and that partner can potentially give you a more personalized and holistic strategic perspective.
3. Ensure you can deliver fast, reliable support at any size or stage of growth with solutions that scale to fit your business. Even if you don’t necessarily predict massive growth at your company, the pandemic taught us to be ready to make adjustments at a moment’s notice.
4. Mitigate employee downtime with on-demand remote support. Employees today are working with a lot of new tools and responsibilities, so the easier it is for them to receive help when they run into issues, the better.
5. Focus on solutions that help close security gaps. Remote tools can increase organizations’ risk to cyberthreats, so world-class security measures are critical.
6. Proactively push patches, monitor performance, and automate routine IT maintenance. Keeping your infrastructure healthy means less issues you need to react to.

Remote work tools are here to stay, but that doesn’t mean you’re stuck with a disorderly and disjointed toolkit. Cyberthreats, productivity concerns, and pressure on IT support are all driving businesses around the globe to consolidate remote access and support solutions and make life easier for IT. Start with how you support remote work so that you can keep employees up and running and productive regardless of the device or network they’re on, wherever they are.

Explore the tech decisions that other organizations like yours are now making in our Powering Remote Work Virtual World Tour, where we speak to IT leaders around the globe who are facing – and tackling – similar issues.