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FEATURE
matured and IT infrastructure is now quite capable to enable remote working from home or anywhere. With applications like Zoom, Teams and several others, companies found a way out to connect and operate. While not all job functions can be executed remotely, companies have tried to work around options. In the IT distribution sector, initially like all, companies were caught off guard as this was indeed an unprecedented situation, perhaps a disruption never faced by humankind on this massive scale. It did take some time, reviewing the situation and coming to terms with a suitable response to continue operations. Anand Choudha, CEO & PRESIDENT, at Spectrum, a leading VAD says, “This has been an awakening call and quite frankly unprecedented for everyone. Initially, it was a little confusing but the first option was to work from home. Thankfully we had an ERP in place taking care of HR, CRM, back office automation, Finance etc, all functions were integrated. So it was all organized and we just had to open the ports for remote working, put VPNs in place and we were up and working within a week’s time. He adds further, “After working for 2 months on this model, the productivity has been similar to prior in terms of output and there has been no impact in terms of that. The impact has been more on the customer facing side, with those meetings at their offices is not possible. Our day to day operations is not affected. We have used Zoom and thankfully it has helped to create a digital workspace with everyone connected and added to that, our internal process automation has helped.”
RIDING OUT THE PANDEMIC Value add IT distributors rely on existing business pipelines and remote working tools to keep Business operations as normal as possible and productive — By R. Narayan
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hese past couple of months haven’t been easy for individuals and Businesses as humankind faces unprecedented health risks from the continued pandemic. With stringent stay at home restraints in place initially for most verticals, excluding some essential services, Business and work as usual was disrupted. Thankfully, with advances over past several years, virtual conferencing and collaboration technologies have fairly
SMARTSMB / May 2020
On the security factors that using Zoom was hogging headlines recently, Anand notes, “Every company is vulnerable and to ensure they secured, there are some basic processes to follow. Convenience was at a cost as individuals who started using these tools found out. However, when you organize meetings with Meeting room IDs and use passwords to validate, then it is fairly safe. We wanted to go with an established product – the way Zoom is integrated with Google calendar in Gsuite. makes it convenient. But there are other tools like Microsoft Teams and it really is upto the company to use tools that they are comfortable with.” Mario M. Veljovic, General Manager, VAD Technologies LLC says that they were also able to make the transition swiftly and the systems were all in place to support the shift as well. He says, “Productivity has good up and we keep calling this new era The New Smart. We are in IT and know how to use IT, we literally changed to work from home over night and continue to do so even after the authorities have relaxed restrictions for business in the UAE.” Similarly, Bulwark Technologies, another distributor fo-
