The COVID-19 outbreak poses unprecedented challenges to businesses, governments, and societies around the world. Companies are reacting in different ways to ensure business continuity. The IT industry leaders share their suggestions on how they are aiding channel community to leverage industry-relevant solutions to face COVID pandemic head-on.
Vikas Bhonsle, CEO at Crayon Software Experts India
“As we all know we are in the middle of an unprecedented global medical crisis that’s redefining the way we are leading our lives.At Crayon we have taken strong measures to ensure the safety of our employees. We have implemented remote working policy and our teams are staying connected by using collaborative tools to ensure business continuity of our customers as well as partners. Challenging times like this requires innovative and next gen technological solutions that define newer business models; a new normal.
Being a software and cloud solution organization, we at Crayon are extending all help possible to our business networks. We are making representations to the largest software publishers to relook the terms of our contracts with them and help businesses by financial concessions during the prolonged lockdown. We are making the entire gamut of our services around software and cloud available to our customers at attractive techno commercial value propositions. As the workforces are being disrupted, we are helping organizations quickly adopt new working models, by connecting employees and providing special access to solutions that maintain productivity and ensure business continuity. We have created an environment in the cloud where customers can host their desktops and continue working as usual. We have stepped up our capacity to address customers’ need to reduce costs by optimizing their infrastructure on-premise or on the cloud and come up with better investment planning. On account of this service, our customers are seeing a dramatic shift in their cost.
I strongly believe people, businesses and the government need to work together to overcome this tough medical and economic emergency. Let’s pledge to maintain social distancing and stay safe,” said Vikas Bhonsle,CEO at CrayonSoftware Experts India Private Limited.
Satish Kumar V CEO, EverestIMS Technologies
“At EverestIMS we call this the new “Digital Normal”. Any good business relationship is based on trust and mutual give and take. Today the COVID 19 virus is testing the boundaries of these relationships as financial considerations stretch cooperation to its breaking point. The channel community depends upon interaction, information sharing, discussion, demos and a host of interactive elements that form their arsenal.However this has been halted completely due to the nature of the current pandemic. Realizing their need, IT Companies have rapidly pivoted and focused efforts towards digital solutions that promote business continuity through online/virtual touch-points and experiences.These span web-sessions, VPN, video conferencing, etc., as the basic lattice. Many have quickly packaged their software into downloadable, trial or subscription versions. This makes it easy for Channels to fulfill a customer request online rather wait for a person or demo to be sent (after the curfew) is over. Many have also nimbly switched to Cloud based subscriptions making it easier for customers to get on-board without having to wait. On the hardware front many companies have quickly offered certain business essentials on rental. Items like laptops, routers, printers and other essential are easily available on rent, thus ensuring that the workforce is fully equipped to work from distant locations. Essentially IT companies have slowly been creating the “Digital Normal”. For us at EverestIMS this is a two-pronged system where our product suite allows businesses to maintain a high level of continuity through 1 – ensuring that their own backend infrastructure is up and running, and 2 – that they are able to engage with customers and stakeholders on a continuous basis. These two crucial factors are paramount to keeping the show running and we are confident of supporting the channel community strongly on these fronts.” Satish Kumar V CEO, EverestIMS Technologies.
Shibu Paul- Vice President– International Sales at Array Networks
“Enterprises across the world are struggling to follow remote work practices to limit the spread of COVID 19 and to ensure that operations are disrupted to a minimum. VPN security has become paramount with everyone working remotely. The key to success at work from home now lies in prioritizing communication. Therefore we look forward to training and developing our channel eco-system to be the facilitators for this digital transformation. The focal point will be to engage with highly skilled selected partners who can evangelize customers.
Business Intelligence has helped us optimize our work and focus on productive trends. Array’s channel program is devised to select partners and continuously trains them on leading-edge solutions. Recently we offered our full-fledged support towards enabling corporate workforce to work from home (WFH) amid the coronavirus threats by offering complimentary Virtual Secure Access Gateway (vxAG) and Direct Desktop Business Continuity Planning license for 30 days to all enterprises who securely wished to plan work from home for their employees.
Our mantra is to work with handpicked channel partners, train them and help them create build sustainable and profitable business models. Our strategy is to empower our partners by offering industry-relevant solutions that partners can successfully leverage in the Indian market.”
Ritesh Deodar, Country Manager, Milestone System
We are experiencing unprecedented challenges in the face of the COVID-19 virus worldwide. Milestone is closely monitoring the COVID-19 developments around our markets and has taken actions to secure the well-being of our employees, the business interest of our partners, and customers. We are following guidelines from local authorities and those of the World Health Organization and are taking all necessary precautions.Our additional measures include:
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Remote working: our teams are fully equipped and set up to work remotely. They have been doing this successfully since the local and national lockdown announcements.
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Support: sales and technical support is operating within their normal hours to ensure our partners get the help they need, when they need it.
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Online training: we have upscale our online training capabilities and capacity.
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Community Webinars: While the current global situation makes it difficult for in person meetings, now is the perfect time to invest in oneself and take the time for a ‘virtual coffee’ together with our team and spend 30 minutes finding what is currently going on in the industry.
