COVID19: 22by7 Expects More WFH Enabled Organizations in Future

For Bengaluru-based SI 22by7 Solutions, delivering a functional environment for the IT infrastructure to ensure business continuity is its raison d’etre. It provides solutions around cyber security, ILM, cloud & virtualization and network infrastructure. Venkat Murthy, Prime Mover, 22by7 Solutions explains how having a majority of remote support services staff has helped the company cope better.

During this COVID19 crisis what are the measures 22by7 has undertaken to continue its own business without disruption?  

There are a slew of measures that 22by7 has undertaken post COVID19 crisis and the subsequent lockdown. The most critical has been perhaps the decision to take a software driven approach for most of our solution offerings at least for the next 3 to 6 months. For example, in case a customer is looking for a desktop solution, we will try to offer a VDI-based solution. In case of a Work from Home (WFH) solution, we will look at how the security best practices can be bundled along with. These will definitely be our short term goals to prevent business disruption.

What are the initiatives 22by7 has taken for employees? What has been the impact financially on 22by7 and what are your plans to mitigate them?

We have been proactive in taking initiatives for our employees that use this as an opportunity to bring the team much more cohesively together. After all, 22by7 was nominated as one of the Great Places to Work in India. Since April anyway is usually a lean month, we are using this time and opportunity to re-strategize our technology roadmap with our employees. We are organizing bi-weekly sessions for our employees on how to stay healthy, stay positive, tips for kids ands families, developing interpersonal skills and other Work-Life Balance skills.

We have already devised a BCP for the next 8-12 months and therefore we will not have a single layoff. Till now, we have not made any salary cuts either. Financially, both cash flow and profitability have taken massive hits with there being zero business since March 15. In fact, it has been our good work in the last 7-8 years that have helped us maintain our reputation and some sort of financial stability till now. While we are striving to save every penny, we are looking forward to our distributors too for some leeway in payments and waiting for some reliefs from the Government meant for SMEs.

What are the measures and initiatives taken by 22by7 for the uninterrupted service to customers?  

For all our existing customers, we have created a technical task force. This task force ensures not just 100% availability for our customers, but also that all calls are received in our 24/7 NOC. Luckily, we already had 55-60% of our staff providing remote support services only and this has stood in good stead during this time.

What are 22by7’s business and operating models? In light of the COVID19 crisis how has this model got impacted?

About 12-18 months back, we had decided to move 50% of our staff to remote support primarily to cut costs. This has really helped in the current situation and ensured no disruption for customers. We have got a gloating customer testimonial for our remote support services during this lockdown.

Which are the verticals you witness maximum traction? How has COVID19 impacted business with the existing customers?

IT/ITeS will be the leading sector contributing 60% of our revenues followed by pharma, hospitals, colleges. The impact has been across the board especially on the generation of new businesses. Decisions are getting delayed across the board in all the sectors. With the lockdown expected till middle or end of May, more and more WFH with security solutions are getting evaluated.

What are the contingency plans you have put in place if this crisis persists or gets escalated?

We are ensuring that there is a readiness among all the people to believe in recovery. They need to understand the importance of working extra to come out of this mentally and probably re-invent themselves. Financially, we have made contingency planning for the next 10-12 months.

What sort of business and financial impact you expect for 2by/7’s business as a result of COVID 19? 

There could be an uptake in the datacenter business with most customers now focusing on BCP. Choose Your Own Device (CYOD) might become popular as businesses can rum remotely as long as an employee has access. Security measures like access control, user identity management, data encryption will take a leap especially in a WFH environment.

In fact, the crisis has shown that only 2% of the organizations were WFH-enabled while the others are currently managing on a stop-gap basis. Now at least 8-10% of the organizations will look to get WFH-enabled in the near future.