07 July 2021
Bob Sims, CHRO, Park Place Technologies
Initially viewed as temporary work from home measures to mitigate the impact of global lockdowns, today these practices continue as the pathway out of the crisis. Now, as most countries face a tentative return back to a hybrid-working model - part remote/part physically located on-premise - how do network and infrastructure leads embrace workplace shifts whilst ensuring that services, data and applications remain uncompromised and secure? And for those organisations returning back to bricks and mortar offices and head office locations, how are productivity levels ringfenced in support organisations? With diverse corporate and government attitudes, how can CTOs possibly keep up with the varying parameters, especially when dealing with networks on a global scale?
First, let us look at the physical changes that now face enterprises for IT provision, as bricks and mortar on premise infrastructures have pivoted to remote support models. In 2020 as country by country the virus raged, workers and IT departments alike frantically maximised all available tech to keep baseline services on without compromise to corporate network security. Companies switched en masse from services traditionally delivered by on premise servers to cloud based server-less office computing apps such as Microsoft 365. Instructed to temporarily ‘stay put’ in ready-made home offices, employees dusted off old web cams and speakers to try to achieve superior online meeting places spawning the advent of back-to-back online meetings.
Unexpectedly in most sectors (excluding retail, travel & hospitality), productivity levels for back-office staff actually rose as employees assumed greater responsibilities and increased numbers of projects that only constant online scheduling would allow. Behind the scenes, network leads were immediately consumed by ensuring security of critical data and apps through significantly increased levels of cyber threats, especially in environments where personal devices and laptops running older operating systems were being used as stop-gaps. Enterprises also faced challenges with data silos proliferating from varying collaboration and comms platforms. As weeks progressed, IT moved to standardize options and secure data collection alongside effective reporting in and out of organisations’ CRM systems. Fifteen months later, and while it is recognised that increased online capabilities and meetings have boosted productivity, most governments are encouraging an imminent return to physical offices at least in a some format (and at the same time re-opening the travel, retail and hospitality verticals that are so dependent on workforces being in centralised locations).
As such, management and employees worldwide now face similar work migratory challenges, somewhat in reverse. These include but are not limited to; how to maintain additional productivity levels and collaboration gained digitally to maintain equal productivity in person; how to meet expectations of employees to sustain the better work/life balance experienced in lockdowns: and critically, how to facilitate the opening up of facilities safely and without compromise to employees or customers. All of this involves infrastructure leads being able to accurately accommodate hybrid working locations on a so-far unknown scale. How do CTOs cope with these potential levels of flux without compromise?
If there is one key take-away from the unprecedented events of early last year it is that enterprise network managers and data centre leads will cope admirably with the return to office challenge and critically this time round, movements back into locations can be planned and will likely be staggered gradually to suit. Accordingly, it is highly likely that those providers in IT services will need additional criteria from which to judge success. As such, additional CSAT customer satisfaction ratings and questions from which to ascertain performance and service level adherence in the new world will need to be adopted. Before Covid, largely customer satisfaction scores carried a heavier weighting for onsite and phone support based on engineering fix capability on a sliding scale of success. Operating within Covid, some providers quickly extended their user satisfaction questions to include remote working services and effectiveness of digital support infrastructures/app based Cloud technologies. And moving forward, as the world inches to post-Covid status, it’s worth reflecting that an effective CSAT score baseline will need to be inter-twined with the ability for IT leads to offer corporate IT services holistically to any device, in any location and remotely, yet while still ensuring that business continuity and security are not negatively impacted.
Some service providers – and Park Place Technologies is one such - are already taking steps further still by actively deploying and using AI to proactively predict negative impacts to user satisfaction and address issues in support before they can manifest in CSAT ratings.
These CSAT responses will be collated and used to support the most optimal and orderly return to work possible whilst still allowing for regional fluctuations in progression.
