How do you keep your enterprise afloat when no-one is in the office?
By Matthew Hall
Every business, no matter its size, structure or expertise, can maintain business and process continuity during lockdown and emerge with a solid plan to navigate the unforeseen challenges highlighted by Covid-19.
Maintaining process continuity during lockdown
If you haven’t already, now is the time to start assessing your applications and ensure that all your business-critical teams, remain available to customers and employees.
Proactively address potential problems resulting from applications not remotely accessible or requiring key personnel to remain operational.
Prioritise your resources next, determining which services are able to be available online and communicate such to your users. If you cannot support all users at full capacity, create a priority access system.
Check your IT capacity by ensuring that you have sufficient corporate laptops, paired with connectivity like dongles or mobile hotspots and access to enough network bandwidth. Also make provision for concurrent licenses sufficient for authentication solutions, VPN capacity and enough IP addresses to enable remote access to critical applications and data for all users who require it.
Make certain that your customers, channel partners, business partners, vendors, suppliers and other third parties continue uninterrupted because you have communicated your strategy across the board.
Upskill your users on the productivity tools available to them while working remotely is imperative. These should include how to access the VPN, how to setup MFA and how to use collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams.
Key too is notifying your users about the IT resources available to support them in the event of technical issues.
Superceding upskilling however, Covid-19 has highlighted the people imperative: they need purposeful direction, practical empowering and authentic communications.
Retaining business profitability post-lockdown
Now that the initial panic of getting users set up in their homes has passed, businesses can consider how best to set up robust operations, able to take the punch of any eventuality that this new normal throws our way.
Mobile computing has never been so relevant, having taken on a more strategic role as organisations consider what devices are relevant for which users as well as issues like connectivity, accessibility and security, as before mentioned.
To help businesses simplify and accelerate their next steps in enabling their employees to work remotely, the Web is flooded with tools enabling the new role of mobile computing.
For instance, Microsoft has launched a series of Teams Tuesdays Live Events, with basic topics presented so everyone can learn how to create a team online, setup meetings and share documents.
If mobile computing is the new cryptocurrency of success, adaptable people remain the Kruger rands of investment. You can futureproof your business with the best in mobile computing but without implementational expertise and innovation, you’re dead in the water.
Young IT professionals offer indispensable skill sets with specialised abilities necessary to unlock new routes to innovation.
Innovation is crucial to a business being able to improve its processes, bring new and improved products and services to market, increase its efficiency and most importantly, improve its profitability. Whatever form it takes, innovation is a creative process and young IT professionals thrive in creative, innovative and responsive environments.
Unfortunately, these master surfers riding the waves of ICT are in short supply across industries.
In an increasingly digital world, information security is a technical skill in high demand. IT specialists who are able to identify loopholes in systems, pinpoint any vulnerabilities and tailor practices to strengthen the way in which information is managed will enjoy greater demand in the quest for business success.
Businesses can validate young IT professionals by recognising that ideas may come from inside the business, including from employees, managers or in-house research and development work, or from outside the business, including from suppliers, customers, media reports, market research published by another organisation, or universities and other sources of new technologies.
Companies can achieve their desired business focus by filtering these ideas, identifying those that will take the business forward and applying the resources to achieve them.
By maintaining process continuity, mobile computing and specialised skills, not only can businesses stabilise during lockdown, but organisations can go on to navigate the unfamiliar landscape with positive prospects of future growth and profitability.
Matthew Hall is the product director of Rectron