Going into Crisis Mode – Your Workforce and the New Normal

While we are facing the 2nd wave of COVID-19 (or a spiking first – depending on the expert you listen to), enterprises need to go into crisis mode quickly and efficiently. In addition to adapting their business models, looking for additional revenue streams, or alternative supply chains, many companies are now deciding to let almost all their employees work remotely. With the current work visa and travel restrictions, this only makes sense.

We have witnessed the following scenario taking place quite a few times already – It is Thursday, 3PM, an unscheduled management call has just ended, and the action item is this:

“Effective Monday morning, the company is transitioning to off-premise working mode. This is due to the global health situation and pandemic risks…..”

The first thought that crosses your mind (especially if you are in operations, IT, cyber security, etc.) is “there goes the weekend…” and the second thought is “how on earth are we going to make sure everybody can do their job – they need to have the resources that they are used to, at least phone communications, secure access to the ERP, CRM, call recording systems, analytics, and some other essentials.”

So, let’s look at the big picture for a moment – obviously this is a major challenge. Management can opt for providing each employee with a laptop, but that means ordering extra ones. That is expensive and tricky, since they are in short supply as everyone and their mother in law in many companies need to start working from home, and every kid and student attending class from home needs his/her own laptop to videoconference and do homework.

Another option is to provide each employee working from home or remotely with a software-based phone (aka softphones) and a headset. The main drawback? It requires a desktop computer, a stable internet connection, VPN, etc. so this is not an optimal solution. Furthermore – this is good only for VOIP communications and does not cover employees who’re on-the-road.

So….letting them use their own devices (laptops, cellphones) is the answer, right? Well, the IT and CISO department will wholeheartedly disagree. They would be living in a nightmare of not only changing the corporate access permissions (e.g., CRM, recording systems), but also beefing up cybersecurity. As we have seen in previous months, the corona crisis, combined with the working from home (WFH) trend, has been a bonanza for hackers and cybercrooks. To top it off, the company has to bank on the fact that their employees have sufficient bandwidth at home to work remotely, while their kids are gaming and their spouses may also need the same resources to do their own job.

Quite a challenge! So, is there a faster and easier solution to address the problem? One that will make management, employees, the IT department, and the CISO happy?

Indeed there is! The answer is adding a business line within minutes to the cellphone of each and every remote worker that will only be used for business calls, allow secure and trackable access to corporate resources, allow recording, and – adhere to privacy regulations. To make sure that the quality is high, and it also does not gobble up a lot of bandwidth, the solution uses the  cellular network (and not VoIP).

Sound good? Want to learn more? Contact us now or request a demo.