How is your business shifting in response to the COVID-19 outbreak?
With an increased remote workforce, our “Remote Workforce Readiness Assessment” provides a comprehensive review of a customer’s environment to ensure their hardware capacity and configuration is able to scale to provide increased connectivity for remote workers.
We also expanded our offerings to include a “Remote Power User Enablement Package.” This package is designed to give executives and power users a home office solution that includes secure network connectivity, the latest in collaboration technology, and white glove end-user support. Additionally, we are offering complimentary video conferencing with the full functionality of Cisco Webex Enterprise, including unlimited meetings and webinars and an international audio plan.
We are offering flexible payment solutions that allow customers to get the equipment they need now and take six months to determine how they would like to pay. On the sales front, we are focused on simply checking in with our customers and ensuring they know we are here for them throughout this journey.
“Leadership provided tools for our engineers to continue their studies and achieve certifications.”
How have you aligned your team around this shift as employees work from home?
To help maintain a trusting environment and encourage open dialogue, we hold weekly Q&A calls for myself and our leadership team to provide updates on the current state of the business and ongoing initiatives. Additionally, we have been hosting virtual team-building activities, like trivia, to maintain culture.
Leadership provided tools for our engineers to continue their studies and achieve certifications they’re interested in. Managers and mentors are finding creative ways of allowing others to shadow tasks and gain exposure to new responsibilities. HR ensures that employees are provided additional work-life balance information and materials to support themselves and their families outside of the workplace. Our employees support one another via email and collaboration tools such as WebEx, Microsoft Teams and our HRIS system.
How do you think this shift will impact your business in the future?
We do believe the way people engage, how they work and where they make their investments will be forever changed. We are expecting less face-to-face interactions through the year. This adjustment will require us to rethink how we deliver services, run meetings, leverage collaboration solutions and cultivate interpersonal relationships. We believe customers will make less investments in traditional on-premise equipment and look to implement cloud services where they can. Additionally, we are expecting some industries to have an extended period of uncertainty and financial pressure, which will have macroeconomic impact on all of us for the foreseeable future.