Administration suggestions for employees using Ubuntu

We're pretty much set on putting Ubuntu LTS (open to alteatives if it's really helpful) on a few new machines for some employees to cut the cost of Windows licenses and seemingly daily glitches.

We run a CentOS 7 server currently, but are looking for suggestions on ways to apply a policy, or otherwise make remote administration of these new Linux boxes easier. If it's going to take more than an hour or two to setup, it's not worth it (there will only be a few machines in production like this for now).

Suggestions?