Intelligent CIO North America Issue 19 | Page 20

LATEST INTELLIGENCE

DIGITAL ACCELERATION IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

Business decision-makers around the world were collectively blindsided by the scale and speed that working environments changed as a result of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic .

Nearly two thirds ( 62 %) of North American respondents indicate they had business-continuity plans in place , although for many organizations , these were oriented on traditional notions of disaster recovery .
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At the same time , a recent survey by MIT Technology Review Insights , in association with VMware , finds that most had inadvertently prepared for the pandemic .
More than eight out of 10 North American organizations had already made significant investments in their digital infrastructure and related operational processes – allowing them to take the massive global shift to remote work and online business in stride .
“ We ’ re used to dealing with emergencies like tornadoes or hurricanes ,” says Debika Bhattacharya , Vice President for global solutions at Verizon Business Group . The telecom company had a businesscontinuity team that was focused on bringing the corporate network back into operation after an outage . This changed since the pandemic .
“ It became more about , ‘ How do we make sure that we ’ re caring for the well-being of employees who are now working from home ?’” Bhattacharya says .
In response , Verizon stepped up communication with its people , with daily video check-ins to determine what employees needed to work from home , be it child-care funding or office equipment . If employees had poor internet service where they lived , the company added additional capacity or otherwise looked to see how it could help . “ The focus shifted from just fixing the network to making sure employees are productive ,” Bhattacharya says .
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