With the COVID-19 crisis escalating fast across the globe, businesses are facing a two-fold challenge: protecting their people while rapidly managing the shift to new work models. As the crisis shows no signs of slowing down immediately, businesses must take urgent measures to minimize workforce disruption caused due to higher rates of sick leaves, complete lockdown in many countries, and the lack of a mobile work setup. Aphelion advises organisations to look at this situation as an opportunity to address the vulnerabilities in their existing business models, and create a crisis resilient, elastic enterprise ecosystem – with support of a robust and responsive IT framework.

Scaling a Remote Workforce

COVID-19 has brought to the forefront several vulnerabilities of the traditional IT enterprise setup, which have historically been overlooked. Many businesses have temporarily shut down as they don’t have a plan to deal with a crisis of this scale. Several other companies have realized that they are not equipped to ensure 100% productivity with their current setup and are looking for ways to improve their situation immediately.

Setting up a remote workforce and scaling it further at an enterprise-level to ensure business continuity, especially during this time of crisis, is a challenging task. However, with right practices and timely implementation, enterprises can’t only achieve optimum business results, but also:

• Optimise business operations relying on IT
• Mitigate security risks and create a securely governed digital workspace
• Maintain, if not exceed, workforce productivity
• Keep the communication across the geo-distributed teams seamless

Leverage Technology to Address Customer Demand

Whether this outbreak surges or lulls business, ensure your IT infrastructure is prepared.

• Expand capacity for self-service and digital sales. As companies address customer questions, orders and even cancellations, prepare content and capacity for self-service web, email, chatbots, etc. to handle the most common questions and purchases, freeing up customer service reps to handle complex issues.
• Make remote experiences more personal — this can make all the difference. Examples would include video face-to-face time with customers, organizing and holding remote events and telehealth.
• Seek and be open to opportunities that adapt products or capacity for current demand. For example, Japanese electronics manufacturer, Sharp, has converted one of its factories to make face masks and some Chinese manufacturers have shifted some of their existing resources away from their traditional products (in low demand due to the outbreak) to high-demand products like protective gear.

Think Beyond COVID-19: Digitally Enabled Geo-Distributed Workforce is the Future

As more organizations become multinational companies (MNCs) with offices and/or factories in different countries, real-time collaboration between teams across the globe is critical for efficient and uninterrupted business. As teams expand globally, it’s increasingly critical to ensure IT infrastructure is robust and secure. Building a digital workforce that’s resilient to disruption with processes, training and planning and implementing the latest tools and technology will make collaboration seamless and mitigate crises.

• Assess your preparedness for the future (crisis or no crisis)
• Evaluate the readiness of your IT infrastructure to securely manage disruptions
• Up your stack: Update your enterprise software ecosystem to make seamless remote collaboration an inherent feature
• Build a crisis-resilient workforce
• Upgrade your enterprise’s risk management mechanisms

How Aphelion Can Help

At Aphelion, we believe no business should be left behind because they can’t keep up with the pace of technology. During these uncertain times, many companies may need assistance with rapid implementation of their work-from-home programs as well as other technology changes and requirements. We’re here to help you plan and address your immediate as well as long-term needs. Regardless of the industry or location, Aphelion can help organisations set up their remote workforce and achieve agility, scalability, and mobility.

We have been offering an array of IT solutions to companies for over a decade. With long-standing experience in supporting customers with complex IT infrastructures and with deep expertise in business continuity solutions, we know what it takes to keep businesses running – while ensuring data security and employee safety. Being a successful Managed Services Provider, managing mission-critical systems for customers across the globe, we have always gone above and beyond to maintain our customers’ critical technology operations and will continue to do so during as well as after the COVID-19 crisis.