Kathleen D. Miller, 55, is the founder and owner of
organizational performance consulting company Miller
Consultants based in Louisville, Kentucky. The term based
should be used loosely--Miller and her administrative assistant are
located there, but the majority of the employees and long-term
contractors work from other states, including Connecticut,
Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas. Miller also maintains
a virtual office in Bonita Springs, Florida, to deal with the
business's burgeoning Spanish-speaking market, as well as to go
after the entrepreneurial market there. She's looking into
opening a regular office there as well.
Miller Consultants started off in Miller's Lexington,
Kentucky, home; moved to a traditional office building in
Louisville, Kentucky, in 1995; and began to spread out
geographically eight years ago. "We wanted to get the best
employees and the best associates we could possibly find in terms
of expertise," says Miller. One employee who had commuted into
Louisville from Houston is now working from Tennessee. The change
also made sense because the company's client base is located
worldwide. "Why would I expect people to move to Louisville
when the work is everywhere?" Miller says.
Miller credits top-notch technology with making the multiple
sites work. Miller Consultants installed a Citrix server to allow
employees to log in from anywhere. "The Citrix server is the
core of everything for us," Miller says. While The Fortex
Group handles most of its needs in-house, Miller has been using the
same IT consultants for 12 years. She leaves a lot of the research
and recommendations up to them. Through the Miller Consultants
website, they set up chat rooms and bulletin boards to keep the
communications flowing. Employees can leave notes and keep
conversations going through this private section of the website.
They also occasionally use internet conferencing software like
Microsoft's NetMeeting.
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But when it really comes down to it, Miller Consultants gets a
lot of use out of an old system: teleconferencing. The company had
invested in a high-end videoconferencing system that matched the
quality of those used by the large corporations it deals with, only
to find that nobody really uses it. Now Miller has several
teleconferences per week with different project groups while the
participants work with files pulled from the Citrix server.
If some of the solutions The Fortex Group and Miller Consultants
are using sound simple, it's because they are. With workers
spread out geographically, training for complex applications can be
more trouble than it's worth. Says Cohen of new technologies,
"For them to be really effective, people have to get used to
using them as second nature."
Home Offices
A home office is a popular supplement to a regular office.
Cohen, for example, often works for a few hours from home in the
morning before heading to the office. Many entrepreneurs use their
home offices to get work done at odd hours. Others, like Miller
Consultants, have employees that work only from home offices.
There are some specific technology needs for home offices. Mike
Wilson, president and CEO of IT consulting firm Comnexia, has set up
home offices, remote offices and multiple locations for many
growing businesses. He's pleased with the advances in VoIP and
has been using the technology for many of his clients. Among the
advantages he cites are that home users can have an in-office
extension, making it easy for co-workers and clients to get in
touch.
As to be expected, security is always a big deal. "Home
offices are having to become wiser to security," Wilson says.
Besides the usual anti-virus requirement, he recommends installing
a low-end firewall. He personally uses a Cisco PIX 501, which is an
actual security appliance. A solution like that is fairly advanced
for a home office and runs in the hundreds of dollars. It's
also worth checking into popular firewall software like ZoneAlarm,
available from Zone Labs. That particular application comes as part
of a security suite for less than $70 per year.
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