Making Remote Access easy
Chances are that if your business uses a Microsoft Dynamics application, you pay to for a helpdesk service as insurance that help is readily available when you have a problem or a question. That service needs access to your system, as with the customisation that are easily possible for Dynamics applications in particular, you’ll be aware that different pages don’t even have to look even vaguely similar for different organisations.
This means that they need to be looking at the same system you are and often that means ‘dialling in’ (although in reality these days it’s not a dial in but a connection across the internet). That means they can get to the servers running your system and do the diagnosis or changes needed to give you the response you need.
In the organisation I run, we have seen the proliferation of specialist VPN or SSL devices to get this access, and I have to say, they significantly slow the response time that the organisations installing those devices get.
If I have to look up instructions, download and install software (maybe uninstalling other software it conflicts with but which I need for another customer), then configure it with the security details before even being able to try and connect that’s putting 20 minutes onto the response straight away. For a helpdesk with 15 plus people and over 250 customers systems to support, it just becomes a nightmare to manage.
Secondly, it also means that we have to have details of how to connect to your system logged on CRM for all of our teams to access when needed .That means in my organisation for instance, there are over 80 people who can see those details, because they might need them to do their job. It’s not exactly secure though is it? Do we change every customer’s password when someone leaves for example? No, it’s simply impractical to do that.
Compare that to where we have what is called a ‘site to site’ VPN. In this instance just two people in my company have access to the security details of how to connect to your systems. We setup a connection on one of our firewall systems. It’s monitored so that we will know if it’s failed before we have a urgent need to use it. In addition we log access across these types of connection so we have an audit trail of what happened, not possible with the other types. When someone leaves, we terminate their access to our network and that closes their access to yours.
Then if there is a site to site VPN we can have a hyperlink in our CRM system that connects the user straight through to your system; a login and password are still required. That means we can do it while on the phone with a much better chance of achieving a resolution of the issue on that first call. Even if your company as a policy of not leaving open access then all you have to do enable that account when it’s needed.
Why not make a service you pay for as effective as possible? With most Dynamics partners supporting ever increasing numbers of customer (it’s getting more popular) having specific setups just for you will not get you the best service. Ask them what method of connection and support that, it will pay off for you very quickly.
Alternatively of course, you could just move your Dynamics system to the cloud, access will be very standard there.
P.S. So within an hour of writing this, I received access details that are impossible because the 32bit software will not install on my Windows 10 64 bit machine – the customer will have to wait till I get back to my old laptop running 32bit windows 7 – see what I mean?