Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 57 | Page 52

FEATURE: REMOTE WORKING technology is not going to help and therefore a rapid adoption of SaaS based solutions is really the only option. Great experiences for employees and customers should be the purpose. Once you have this objective in place you can start focusing on IT workflows, employee and customer workflows. How are organisations in the region adapting to this new normal? Remote work now has technology at the heart of every interaction. For some, this whole shift is going to be massive. We may find that traditional managers have become so used to the structure of physical office meetings that the leap is going to be very hard to handle. We know that some people feel that they have to be in the room with other people in order to get things done. They don’t have the ‘soft skills’ needed to express themselves effectively over video and voice calls. But as companies are starting to accept that projects and operations can work without large offices, we are already seeing SIMPLY PUT, INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY PLUS GREAT EXPERIENCES TRANSLATE INTO HAPPY EMPLOYEES. businesses plan for no return to office for several types of roles. Our customers are actively looking for ways to reduce operational expenditure, outsource contracts and salary bills by allowing their workforce to permanently work from home. What are the some of the key requirements from customers – both yours, and more generally – right now? We are witnessing a historic paradigm shift that is forcing businesses to reinvent their processes. This paradigm shift is loosely referred to as ‘Digital Transformation’, a phenomenon that some people consider to be the fourth leg of the industrial revolution. While this transformation was going to happen anyway, the pandemic has dramatically accelerated the revolution. What would normally take years or decades is occurring in weeks and months. The requirements from clients is not only to continue this modernisation, but to accelerate the implementation. 52 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com