Key technology considerations for the "new normal"

Nothing forces rapid organisational transformation like a global pandemic. Let's face it, most organisations that claimed staff were able to work remotely faced a challenge when it became a must-have rather than a nice to have. Their systems were designed for what the business expected - the option for some employees to work remotely part of the time, requiring not much more than access to email, ability to hold conference calls and a VPN connection to the organisation.

Businesses tended to focus on the idea that if a member of staff could work from home, then they had ticked the remote working box. They didn’t consider what would happen if everyone was required to work from home and unable to access the office with the vast amount of infrastructure it offers. Suddenly, everything available at the office that was previously taken for granted – from easy collaboration with colleagues, access to communications via the mailroom, and high-speed access to business information in a secure manner – became unavailable. Yet each is integral to business performance.

Today's leaders are thinking about a new era of business post-Covid-19. A time when a pandemic is a reality and being unprepared is not an option. No one can predict exactly what the future holds, so business continuity planning will be of the utmost importance.

The new future of work comes with a priority list compiled to ensure business continuity in times of crisis. I would suggest that this list will include remote working enablement, remote process automation and cloud.

1. Remote Working Enablement

Organisations that have provided their employees with the right technology to work from home during the lockdown, have proven to be the difference between business continuity and total disruption. Many employees were left buying technology ad hoc from etailers to enable them to work effectively. This allows unchecked IT to enter the organisation creating a security risk and lack of standardisation with consequences for corporate IT support. Tomorrow's remote working enablement will require each organisation to provide a complete package that considers ergonomics, connectivity, hardware and software.

2. Remote Processes Automation

If the office and other business sites are shut for a period of time, who will collect and distribute potentially business critical physical mail? Can employees action business processes easily whilst remote from the office? Is there a reliance on hardcopy or manual processes within departments such as HR, Finance, Customer Service and Operations? The digitisation of business processes allows employees to work unhindered wherever they are, often with a higher level of productivity than when in the office! This also presents the ideal time to look at automation – if employees are working on routine, repetitive tasks, then why not free them up for more productive and rewarding work through the use of bots?

3. Infrastructure and Cloud

You can have the best people in the business working with great processes, but if your central IT can't support their needs, then everything grinds to a halt. Now is the time to review your infrastructure and cloud strategy to ensure it can scale to meet remote working requirements. It’s also important to check you have the right policies in place to root out phishing scams and cyber-attack attempts. Having great tech at home becomes irrelevant if employees struggle to access company systems via a slow VPN.

The future

Walk through any city today and you can hear birds singing, smell the air is clearer and see the streets devoid of traffic. We may all go back to working the way we did before Covid-19, but I believe companies will take what they have learned from this situation to consider new ways of working through productivity tools and improved home access to build a more robust business. To achieve this, they must consider a combination of remote working, process automation and cloud to maintain business as usual regardless of where employees work from. Because this ‘new normal’ still needs a lot of work before it becomes business as usual.