That was then. This is now. But what’s next for business services?

The business services sector covers a diverse range of industries – recruitment and HR, food and catering, legal, security, and many others.

But, like every sector in the world recently, they all shared a common challenge – how to move the majority of your workforce to homeworking.

Successfully managing to get everyone connected and working from home was no mean feat. But with that achieved, what now for organisations?

Reflect, reassess, reimagine

Now’s the time to reflect on those decisions and choices made and to reassess the impact on their network, security, cloud and collaboration ecosystems. Coronavirus has put IT in the spotlight and digital transformation is now a strategic priority for businesses of almost every size and type.

Reflecting and reassessing is critical – but not just in order to keep the business afloat in a new environment. Stepping forward from this moment is a chance for organisations to reimagine a future landscape that drives greater business outcomes as a result of a new way of working and as an opportunity to accelerate their digital transformation plans. One recent survey revealed that 74% of CFOs intend to shift some employees to remote work permanently*.

For recruitment firms, this can mean less bricks and more clicks – cost savings on physical locations and increased flexibility, collaboration and productivity on placing candidates. With high competition and a client-list based on trust and reputation, this changing ecosystem has opened up new targets to hackers, so security is paramount.

In the food services industry, the sudden cancellation of sporting and music events, as well as empty offices has meant that firms are having to radically rethink their business models. There’s a massive demand for cleanliness and a future focus centred around a contactless, touchless, pre-orderable and traceable experience. 

SMEs may have found the journey to a digital workplace quicker and easier to navigate because they’re naturally more agile. But for larger global corporations, adapting to this sudden change presents a number of complications, including geography, legacy infrastructure and vast employee bases. All of which need to be brought up to speed rapidly if they’re to maintain productivity.

Times are changing, challenges aren’t

How do you give employees across multiple global locations a consistent digital experience? How do you make sure your global network, with its multitude of legacy systems and infrastructures, can support digital connectivity? How do you encourage a multinational employee base, probably used to widely varying platforms, to adopt new technologies?

These challenges were troubling big organisations before the pandemic, and they’re just as relevant now. So, at a time when lengthy and complicated migration programmes simply aren’t possible, how can you deliver a smooth transition to a managed platform that cuts costs, optimises operations and delivers productivity gains – at scale and at speed?

Meeting your challenges head on

If you’re going to benefit from digital workplace transformation without placing extra pressure on already over-burdened IT departments, you need simpler solutions that deliver:

• seamless migration to the cloud without disruption or risk
• cutting-edge mobile tools and collaboration services
• managed adoption for your users
• reduced costs, improved productivity and rapid ROI
• flexibility to grow with your needs and demonstrate long-term value.

We can help you meet all these challenges.

Flexibility and choice, without disruption and risk

Our approach to migration means that multiple technologies, legacy systems, and varied infrastructure can be easily managed to create a single, seamless, secure global structure that optimises operations and repays your investment quickly.

We can help you connect smoothly and securely to the collaboration applications, data and third-party cloud providers you need globally, including Microsoft and Cisco. And we’ve got a wealth of knowledge and expertise from defending our own network and corporate assets to help you secure yours.

It’s only as good as your people think it is

One of the major keys to success is actively helping your people make the most of collaboration and digital services. 

Our adoption management approach uses a persona methodology to make sure each member of your workforce gets the tools they need to be as productive as possible. And the support they need to use them effectively. It’s how we’ve previously helped large corporations deliver 70% adoption globally within three months. 

Another key component is keeping the user experience consistent across the entire platform, with a choice of vendors as part of your ecosystem. This means you can tailor the experience for each user. And by using standard APIs, you don’t have to waste time on integration.

Helping you create a compelling business case 

Unified comms should help you work smarter, not harder. And it should cut costs, not increase them. 

Our innovative commercial models mean you can manage your costs as users migrate to new platforms. A single global price per user allows you to predict costs and you can flex up and down on users, so you only pay for what you use. For CFOs, this means being able to realise and demonstrate return on investment more quickly, allowing a clearer view of the value and a stronger business case for future transformation. 

Driving more value through better user experience

In short, global business services firms need to be able to flawlessly migrate to a digital workplace, get rapid uptake from their users and demonstrate the value of the investment as quickly as possible. These are all things we can help you with.

Wherever you are on the road to digital workplace transformation, we can get you there faster.

If you’d like to know more, we’re here to help.

*Source: Gartner