As we continue to navigate through uncharted waters during the global pandemic, organisations across the globe are recognising that the abrupt changes that have been made to the way we work may not be short-term. But what challenges do businesses need to overcome to ensure they have a robust remote working strategy in place? And how can they improve their current models to prioritise security and efficiency? Glyn Yates, Country Manager, IMEA region, Matrix42, tells us more…
We can all agree these are unprecedented times – COVID-19 has forced a shift not only in our daily lives, with the safety of our loved ones and the wider community being the priority, but also in the way we do business. It has been a major force behind the re-thinking of organisations’ operational infrastructure, with thoughts focused on today’s near-term pressures and the implications for mid and long-term strategies.
How far had the remote working model been widely adopted prior to COVID-19?
It is said ‘the only constant is change’, however the rate of change isn’t constant and today’s rate of change is exponential. Pre-COVID, remote working was always a ‘nice to have’ employed by some, but it was said that it would never replace office-based or face-to-face interactions.
Even with the most obvious benefits of reducing travel costs, the business community still valued a plane, a taxi, a hotel, another taxi, a boardroom and a coffee over a conference call.
There’s no doubt that face-to-face interaction leads and supports the development of business relationships in and around a ‘meeting’, while interaction with our teammates on the next desk helps company operations run smoothly.
The prevalence of remote working was restricted to those who needed to, and the rest were to carry on as they had done for the last 15 to 20 years.
Many companies simply didn’t have a remote working infrastructure or culture, while others operated remote working as an exception rather than the rule. Then along came COVID-19 and the world changed.
Within weeks of the first cases, and to this date, remote working and ‘work from home’ (WFH) is the new normal, with all companies having to adapt to the new requirements for Business Continuity (BC) – with many not having BC plans. This presents both a major challenge and a great opportunity.
What are some of the initial hurdles that organisations need to overcome to adapt to a remote working model?
Remote working and work from home (WFH) doesn’t just mean video calls and collaboration but is about being able to provide the infrastructure to a distributed workforce, with each ‘worker’ having individual set-ups away from their office.
More importantly it means providing access to business applications from outside of the company network.
Today’s company network is protected at great expense with a variety of technologies and strategies from sandbox to subnet, firewalls and proxies, malware and DLP, to name a few, as well as personnel education.
Key and critical applications were provided to specific workers on company machines through a company network – think of HR and the HRMS system, or finance and ERP. And even with these measures in place, breaches occur and for well-known organisations are highly publicised and very costly.
Now imagine the increase in vulnerability and subsequent risk when access to the same critical applications is needed across hundreds of personal devices from outside of a protected network – and imagine the hair pulling of ITOps and SecOps teams throughout the land as they struggle with this.
So, access is key to enable WFH for the protection of the employee, but secured access is critical to the protection of the business. And all talk naturally focuses on Secured Unified Endpoint Management (SUEM), whether this is done via several different technologies or you are fortunate to utilise a single platform that delivers this capability.
Can you outline some of the key benefits of remote working?
I am sure we have all experienced the good, the bad and the ugly of remote working. The most common feedback I have heard, from many of my colleagues and friends, is that they are simply more productive – with conference call after conference call possible and all systems at their fingertips.
From a cost efficiency perspective there are many instances of companies re-assigning budgets; travel factored cost of sales reducing; customer engagement, including training, now being led remotely; real estate and floorspace needs being re-examined; events expenditure being shelved in favour of other marketing activities. This may also include cases where companies are estimating the average weekly coffee and kitchen spend and funnelling that to other areas of the business.
Collaboration between functions and locations has improved – no longer siloed by a physical desk behind a physical door within a physical team, many people from various departments are ‘meeting’ for the first time.
Availability has increased – I’m sure we have all managed two to three different conversations at the same time while we are ever-present at our home office desk; the times the conference call is on mute and you are messaging away to various others about the call or on other subjects.
The conference call itself has become more personable, with the number of faces visible on a call being almost everyone and black screens being the black sheep.
And not to mention the time spent with the family has dramatically improved – no more business trips or late nights in the office.
We are also seeing that company culture is changing. I have worked in companies where a hard 8.30am start of the day was mandatory, being at your desk and ‘productive’. Working from home was seen almost as a ‘holiday’ and a chance to ease the workload and availability, with mistrust being at the root. Flexible working hours and allowances for ‘life situations’ were frowned upon. The only way to conduct meaningful business was over a coffee and a handshake.
I think we can all agree that business outlooks have shifted and hopefully companies can appreciate there are various trusted ways of working in the modern world.
I can see a short-term implication of the ‘always available’ situation we are in, with some conference calls placed to fill diaries and working times now seemingly 24/7, however this will balance out as companies will focus on productivity while still ensuring the mental welfare of the employees as well as the physical.
What advice would you offer organisations looking to improve their remote working models?
We have already discussed how important it is to offer secured access to critical systems and, along with that, is the importance of protecting company data and making personal devices as corporate as possible, segregating business and personal applications.
This can be achieved with the creation of a ‘workspace’ – a dedicated portal on a device which is for business application use and can be fully ring-fenced and protected, yet allowing employees access to all applications and services as though they were sat in a head office.
Engagement between the business and employee is vital in a remote working environment, so services across all functions should be made available to the employee to request and track, preferably from a central portal or console. This empowers the employee with self-service type capabilities while offering excellent customer experience and driving high customer satisfaction.
Companies should also automate service request/fulfilment processes to increase operational efficiency and lower costs of service delivery.
One consideration is that it would be too easy to provide every employee with every application and this can be costly from a software licensing perspective at the client and at the server, as well as a nightmare at renewal anniversary and audit times.
Managing the company software estate allows insight into who has, who uses and who needs which application and will be a major factor in cost control for remote working, especially to balance against tightened budgets from a COVID fallout.
If these four components of Secured UEM, Digital Workspace, Enterprise Service Management and Software Asset Management could be combined, then remote working is safe, agile, cost effective and productive, for both the employee and the company.
How will the business survive post-COVID?
Moving forward, looking past COVID-19, there will be an inevitable change in customer priorities and behaviour, which need to be reflected in a company’s strategy, as well as its operations.
I read an interesting post recently, which posed a compelling question – which C has done more to drive Digital Transformation in your company? CEO, CIO or COVID-19?
If there is a silver lining to this situation, it can be that our ability to adapt and overcome and our agility to look at new norms will leave the global business community leaner, yet more robust and ever-increasingly relevant to the times ahead.
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