Digital Bulletin, a global technology media agency, has featured an article written by our CTO, Mike Hinton, explaining how we are continuing to deliver critical services to our clients and partners globally, whilst in the midst of the enormous disruption caused by the Covid-19 crisis.
Covid-19 has changed the way we look at remote working and has possibly changed the way we will work in the future for good. Microsoft Azure is helping us to meet this epic challenge.
In every one of our operating regions governments have, quite rightly, enforced work to be completed from home, so we’ve had to think carefully and quickly implement solutions that not only enable us to provide continuous service but to do so in a scalable and secure manner. By utilizing Microsoft’s Azure Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) and app virtualisation services we’ve been able to provide our BPO centres around the world the ability to work remotely in a matter of days. This means we have continued to support our customers without a break in service whilst putting the health and safety of our people first.
Technology-enabled remote working
Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) was identified as an effective solution to standardise our remote working requirements around the world, aligned with our core technology strategy. We began a successful pilot programme in January 2020 in partnership with our German business, but following the identification of COVID-19 as a business risk this programme was rapidly expanded across the globe. We now have almost a third of our global workforce currently utilising WVD across all lines of business – from call centre to finance. As the global coronavirus situation develops over the coming days we will be looking at up to 100% utilisation across the workforce.
Our deployment is easily and quickly scalable in response to ever-changing requirements; from a simple office closure in normal times to a global pandemic like COVID-19. WVD is also deployed within regions to ensure data residency requirements are met and performance is optimum.
By being able to scale up platforms and remote working using Microsoft Azure’s various tools, in combination with Office 356 and Teams as our collaboration platform, I think the way we look at and see remote working in the future has changed already.
We are able to continue to support our customers in the most difficult of situations and put the protection of our people first. Our customers can rest assured that their data is secure and our people can focus being safe whilst continuing to provide a critical service. Not only that, we now have the capacity to take on more from our customers and help our industry leaders in insurance during these uncertain times, whether that be for short-term service or longer-term engagements. We are seeing better productivity as our people are safe and we are still able to deliver service quality in support of our clients’ own end customers.
The full article and more detail can be found on digital bulletin’s website: https://www.digitalbullet.in/thoughtleaders/technology/2020/march/surviving-covid-19/business-continuity-in-a-covid-19-world/
