Thousands of entrepreneurs and small business owners spend the majority of their time working from home. Having a good home office will help boost efficiency. This involves having a workspace that is carefully thought out in design and décor. It also means having the right gadgets and equipment.
The Space
According to ‘Business News Daily’ you can create a great home office without spending lots of money on expensive office furniture from a club store. Instead they say to get an ergonomically designed chair. They also advice to use specific task lighting in low lamps to avoid straining your eyesight. The author continues to suggest that before purchasing a desk, really think about your needs. Those beautiful antique desks may look great in magazines, but consider your work style as well as your technology equipment and file storage needs.
Computing
Having a secure storage system that is accessible anytime via the web is a vital part to running operations. You can go online and utilize a free service like Google Drive, Dropbox or iCloud, but you only get 5GB of storage. This might be fine if you are a student, but someone running a professional business needs much more storage. If you want the most in storage and accessibility, creating your own cloud is the best way to meet all your data storage needs. This can be achievable by simply using your home’s wireless router. Just make sure your router is new enough that it has USB ports so an external storage drive can be connected.
You will want to map to the drive of your home computers. Major carriers like Linksys and Cisco explain how to do this on their website for Mac and Windows users. But this is not a true cloud until you grant the system with “anywhere access”.
Access from Anywhere, Anytime
Sometimes we make pitches or presentations to groups and clients. Being able to access information away from home on the cloud is vital to your success. Just connect your external storage drive to your router via the Ethernet port and you can have access to the cloud and its data from anywhere.
Office Gadgets
Some of the new inventions of 2013 were designed specifically for the home office. For example, the Hype Bluetooth Prism Mobile Center lets users pair up to two Bluetooth devices at the same time. The wireless headset’s charging base doubles as a speakerphone with caller-ID and conference call capabilities. There is even an additional SB port that lets users change devices out while they are paired. This device is the Swiss army knife of telecommunications equipment—it provides many functional uses and eliminates the need to buy multiple machines and have chords everywhere.
Streamlining
It is important that your workspace and office equipment reflect each other—both must be streamlined and made to work and serve their purposes with maximum efficiency. Be sure to read up on how to set up an office that is ergonomically designed, and do some online research to find the best tech toys of 2013.
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