Innovating during Covid-19

May 18, 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on our daily lives at home and at work. Many of our clients have had to be creative during these times, developing innovative ways to interact with their customers and deliver services predominatly through digital channels.

Working from home

The move to working from home, or WFH as it is affectionately referred to was dramatic. Businesses who had already invested in digital in recent years made the transistion relatively easy, and were able to get their teams working remotely very quickly with minimum disruption to back office functions. Most had not really embraced online collaboration tools such as Skype, Microsoft Teams, Zoom but quickly got up to speed to keep those vital day to day conversations going with their teams.

For those who had not invested in digital the move was a bit more chaotic. There was a race to buy laptops, many clients were still using bulky desktop PC's, whilst some took them home, others simply did not have the room or home set up to accomodate a PC.

Thankfully email remained a consisent reliable friend for most but then there was the telephony. Redirecting landlines to mobile devices, having the abiity to manage call diversion online, handling calls outside of normal office hours all become key requirements.

Innovating

Getting setup to work from home was just the first step for many on the Covid-19 Pandemic journey. Many of our clients were still heavily reliant on face to face customer interactions and were delevering services on premise or at client sites around the UK. They needed to innovate!

With a bit of creativity and technology support from the Infraweb team here's how some of clients transformed:

  • Physiotherapist's moved to offering online consultations through video for their customers.
  • Restaurants moved to collection / delivery only with online pre-ordering and payment.
  • Estate agents started to do virtual tours and virtual valuations.
  • Dance and Fitness instructors moved to Zoom or Facebook to deliver their classes to thier students.
  • Custom Children parties designers moved from party rental to selling their party products successfully online, even internationally.

These are just a few examples, businesses continue to innovate during lockdown but now have to start planning for the future. What are the effects of social distancing? Do I have enough office space? Do I need an office in the future? Will distancing guidelines remain in place for 6/12/24 months? The list goes on!

Is this the new normal?

In reality, no-one really knows but we have learned a great deal over the past few months. Businesses have adapted quickly where possible, identified new opportunities, and made the most of technology to keep their customers engaged. The external environment remains dynamic and volatile, so business agility is key to success when reacting against key pandemic events, esepcially social distancing.

For me I think we will see a different approach to day to day working life, a blend of home working and office time for some, whilst others may work from home full time. Just look at google, twitter and some major banking firms, they have already offered this to thier workforce!


So most importantly #StaySafe. If you have been "WFH", let us know how it has been for you in the comments below.

comments powered by Disqus