The New Corporate Imperative

The New Corporate
Imperative

Turning the page on work from home

Over the last several months, IT leaders have found themselves in the center of a C-Suite conversation. For many, work from home was not a priority. However, circumstances dictated that they rapidly shift employees — tens of thousands of them in some cases — from working in the office to working from home often in just a matter of days.

While every IT leader had their own journey during this time, overall, the transition has generally worked thanks to a combination of broadband availability, mobile and cloud solutions and many long hours by countless dedicated IT leaders and their teams. Leaders often found themselves improvising tools that were good enough, at least on a temporary basis.

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Good enough took two common forms: begrudgingly sanctioning the use of rogue applications, and cobbling together disparate point solutions to address employees’ immediate needs–frequently ignoring policies against the use of personal devices. Under the circumstances, acting quickly to support the move to a virtual work environment was the right choice even though leaders recognized this tactical approach would not lead to long-term sustainability.

These temporary solutions left gaps, silos and sustainability questions: gaps between employee communications and contact center agent-customer communications; organizational and application silos as global teams chose different communications platforms; and sustainability questions about technological approach and long-term cost effectiveness under IT budget duress.

“We’ve historically partnered with on-premises legacy providers for our communications and contact center, which severely limited the way our employees and contact center agents could interact with each other and service customers.”

Mark Groveunder
Senior VP, IT & Customer Service at Acer Inc.

But the landscape has shifted again and now, according to a recent Gartner CFO survey, 74% of companies plan to permanently shift to more remote work post COVID-19 and 80% of Customer Service and Support leaders predict that the transition to work from home will have a lasting impact on the way contact centers operate.

What if we could reimagine communication from the ground up? What if we could reimagine the cost structure created by the complexity of your on-premises communication infrastructure from the ground up? How do we move beyond individual, temporary work-from-home and instead empower every team, department and function, regardless of physical location? Beyond just operating our business remotely, how do we operate from anywhere?

To help leaders on this journey, we recommend they think long-term and answer these key questions:

How can I ensure a consistent, frictionless and more personalized customer experience–all while call volume is increasing and budgets are shrinking?

How effectively can I support the organization as processes previously performed face-to-face are now handled remotely?

What tools will best help boost productivity and bring open collaboration to the entire dispersed workforce–without adding complexity and confusion?

How do I help provide oversight, control and visibility into every area of the business?

Key Takeaways.

Navigating the next evolution of remote work requires plotting your course. We see this chapter as the beginning of an organization’s transformational journey and hope you will take away the following:

View operate-from-anywhere as the next evolution of work from anywhere, because thinking of remote work in an operational context acknowledges its centrality to corporate governance, enhancing resilience and other competitive advantages.

Evaluate what you have learned in the first half of 2020, and begin applying those lessons to develop a plan for 2021 and beyond.

Act with urgency — The speed and scale with which you act will determine your success. And while you want to make sure you get the solution that best fits your needs, it is important to research and develop your action plan with haste. Engage trusted advisors to help and accelerate the process if needed.

Operate from Anywhere.

Organizations are evolving from the temporary, individual (or departmental) nature of work from home towards a more holistic approach. “Operate from anywhere” recognizes that most business is a team sport with little room for “silo-doing” and “silo-thinking”. It recognizes that long-term business survival requires a strategic approach to communications, one that optimizes productivity, ensures customer retention, maximizes revenue generation, and provides visibility throughout the organization.

This is not a quick-fix, IT-only problem. It is a critical component of good corporate governance that must be top of mind for corporate boards and the entire C-Suite. With 8×8 Open Communication Platform, it’s possible to bring together your employees, agents and customers. From anywhere. At any time. And from any device. Today, these are the essentials of business.