CEO, ZNetTechnologies
Q.1 What efforts are being put to stay relevant in this lockdown period?
We at ZNet Technologies, have prepared ourselves for multiple emergency scenarios, including enabling remote working, with secure access to emails, phones, files and the necessary systems and controls to support our customers.
We have powerful and time-tested infrastructure and have built in functionalities needed to manage disaster and business continuity challenges remotely. We have robust plans to provide continued service and do not foresee any issues in meeting our customers’ needs.
We are prepared with scripted protocols that can be proactively activated for the multiple scenarios we have seen in other regions dealing with more advanced stages of the virus.
Our customer and partner support is available 24X7 and our support and technical teams are working at full capacity from home.
We have established and maintained open lines of communication with sales and account teams so that they can report customer context and concerns from the front. We are also active socially and are monitoring our social media channels to listen in to our customers’ feedback.
We have implemented 10 steps to maintain business continuity at ZNet Technologies during COVID-19. We hope, following them, can help other businesses too.
-
Preparing a framework for pandemic preparedness.
-
Ensuring safety of employees and their families.
-
Embracing the digital lifestyle.
-
Monitoring the situation closely.
-
Real- time listening to detect shifting customer sentiment.
-
Reviewing financial implications.
-
Reviewing HR practices and policies.
-
Establishing a communication program.
-
Reassessing our IT actions.
-
Reconsidering the security factor.
Q.2 How relevant is work from home for the IT Industry?
Work from home or telecommuting is highly relevant for all the industries across different sectors in this time of coronavirus pandemic, when employees should stay home to stop the spread of virus. There are various benefits of remote working:
-
Better work-life balance
-
Better focus leading to increased productivity
-
Less stress related to commuting, managing homes while one is away etc.
It is highly relevant for IT industry as it inculcates various habits needed in an IT employee to work and succeed in his/her career.
– IT employees learn to be self-motivated and become self-disciplined.
– No commuting adds to stress -free productivity and they focus and concentrate more without office-life interruptions like loud co-workers, water cooler side chatting, etc.
– IT employees learn more, become independent and more apt with communication tools as they use new business continuity software and tools like Microsoft Teams for video conferencing, Acronis for safe data backup and more.
Q.3 How different sectors of the economy are bearing the brunt of the corona virus outbreak?
As per an article by Bloomberg, Coronavirus Could Cost the Global Economy $2.7 Trillion. The exact impact on the Indian economy is not known yet but there are a number of sectors that are badly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. They include:
Aviation sector: as most domestic and international flights have been cancelled.
Hospitality: Hotels and restaurants are bearing the brunt as travel has been restricted to prevent the spread the COVID-19 and multiplexes have been asked to shut by the government.
Apparel: This sector has been affected because export is banned and because people are notcoming to buy clothes from stores or malls due to lockdown.
Consumer Durables and Electronics: Lockdown has prevented people from visiting stores and buying electronic and consumer durables. Secondly, supply is hit because India imports few electronic components and many mobile handsets from China.
Seafood and Poultry: People have shunned meat due to unsubstantiated social media messages that asked people to avoid poultry to stop the spread of coronavirus further. However, there are no reports to prove the authenticity of these messages.
Q.4 If work from home suits you then are you interested to give this opportunity to rural areas so they can work from home for your organization?
Yes, many in our organization are already working from rural areas as they went home before lock down. During hiring, we value and consider the skillset that a person brings to the table, rather than his location.
Q.5 What are the other empowerment possibilities with less resources?
Organizations with less security resources can make use of enterprise -grade file sync and share technology to remain productive and safe in these challenging times.
To help maintain business continuity of our customers with remote working, we offer low-cost/free business continuity software like Alibaba Cloud’s DingTalk, Hangouts Meet by Google, and Microsoft Teams. Teams is a part of Office 365. It gives unlimited chat, built-in group, and one-on-one audio or video calls, 10 GB of team file storage, and 2 GB of personal file storage per user. They also get real-time collaboration with the Office apps for the web, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and One Note.
Alibaba Cloud’s DingTalk offers real-time multi-language translation, remote video conferencing and other functions, with which team in any country can communicate in real-time and exchange knowledge.
Q.6 What is the effect which you face nationally/globally due to Covid 19 Virus?
Though we are coping well, we expect a significant slowdown in growth during this financial year due to the coronavirus upheaval.
-
There has been a reduction in technology spending from both customers and partners across the globe. That’s basically because many are delaying decision making till the things settle down.
-
Travel restrictions have affected our sales – both national and international. It has also affected our marketing too as many IT events are now cancelled or have been postponed, affecting our marketing strategies.
However, we are optimistic that things will become normal soon and we feel that it’s a bit early to assess the exact damage as the situation is still an evolving one.
