Whether teams, departments or individuals are working from home (WFH) or adopting a hybrid approach, splitting their time between the office and remote locations, businesses are envisioning a new future—one that puts IT at their very centre.

In the current hybrid working landscape, business owners are encouraging their teams, wherever they are working form, to talk for longer. Not since BT rolled out its renowned marketing slogan, “It’s good to talk”, have UK companies fully considered why it is so good to promote open and frequent communication. Businesses see the positive uplift talking gives to their bottom lines by enhancing relationships.

Connectivity enables connectedness, after all. Now, business owners are turning their attention to the IT systems and processes they need to enable their hybrid working strategies to promote good communication and successful operations.

A Flexible Approach to Hybrid Working

On 19th July, the UK government eased its working from home (WFH) policy. Putting the decision into individual businesses’ hands led to a focus on IT infrastructure and the technical systems and processes required to ensure its operability. Now, increased flexibility and hybrid working models dividing teams’ time between home and the office is on the rise.

In today’s workplace, almost half (48%) of managers reveal they miss the face-to-face interaction of pre-pandemic working life and would welcome an increase in face-to-face meetings and office working, new research from Soffos.ai, an artificial intelligence (AI) workplace trainer, reveals.

In Soffis.ai’s latest research, the company surveyed 666 decision-makers and over 3000 other UK adults to ascertain their views on the success of a hybrid working environment for their business. Its responses show that 44% of decision-makers noted how fewer in-person interactions had lowered staff’s perceived appeal of their workplace. According to the findings, 35% said they believed the quality of their products or services had reduced as a result of requiring more technological solutions during Covid-19. A further 39% felt their customer service had worsened due to a lack of in-person familiarity and conversations.

Conferences, events and hybrid working patterns have all re-emerged in the last couple of months, bringing with it this opportunity. But now, as rumbles amid the UK press suggest the government is considering bringing back working from home (WFH) as a core recommendation to limit the number of people contracting Covid-19 during the winter, ensuring our IT infrastructures are robust and comprehensive to enable teams to log on and work remotely is a core priority.

Is Hybrid Lacking Likeability?

However, businesses are struggling to adapt to the flexible hybrid working solution that offers many the best of both worlds, new research from Leeds University suggests. Surveying more than 1000 office workers revealed that less than a quarter (22%) of those participants’ offices had been redesigned to support the hybrid model.

In addition, only 7% of office workers have received training on how to manage or participate in hybrid meetings. In particular, these workers were missing support in understanding the technology required to make hybrid working happen seamlessly and ensure good quality communication, suggesting a training gap exists to enable optimum hybrid working and meeting management.

“The majority [of employers] are developing systems and practices as they go along rather than taking a planned, systematic approach,” said Dr Matthew Davis, from Leeds University Business School, following the results of the study. It seems that IT systems and processes to support a hybrid infrastructure may well be underdeveloped, with strategies taking a back seat.
The data from Leeds University revealed that office workers showed a preference for working more often from the office, perhaps due to the fact that 28% of workers never, or only occasionally, had access to a quiet workspace at home. However, while 33% never wanted to work in the office, 37% said that they wanted to work there five days a week, while 30% wished for some level of a hybrid work pattern, amounting to between one and four days from home.
Individual preferences naturally vary. What is needed though is a consistent and comprehensive approach to handling IT, whether working in the office or at home, especially as the working patterns of teams may be entirely different from one another.
As the balance between productivity and connectivity with protecting peoples’ health amid the pandemic continues, companies are turning to their IT systems and processes to ensure they are able to provide the quality and customer service expected as well as a positive and sociable atmosphere for their employees. Business owners and IT marketing managers are continuing to explore the variety of technology applications available to optimise enterprises’ working environments for their staff, suppliers and customers— with more emphasis, as the hybrid working model looks set to stay.

Tackling Technological Transformation, Today

Ultimately, embracing technology and company-wide digitalization is vital to ensuring overall productivity, connectivity, and quality of communication for the whole team, not to mention, crucially customer satisfaction. Improving and simplifying processes in the long-term is vital to achieve an optimum hybrid working environment.

Process management helps to create a robust infrastructure that saves on downtime and limits impacts to profitability, along with mitigating any potential risks relating to security or service interruption.

The first place to start within businesses is to understand their teams’ level of digital literacy. Bringing onboard IT specialists and support teams to guide teams through options based on their usage and awareness of IT applications is vital. Training sessions can help bring all members of the team onboard with digital transformation plans.

1. Voice and video conferencing software

Many businesses may be questioning if we can expect these digital policies to stay intact beyond the pandemic. In fact, Soffis.ai’s recent research found that 43% of employees said they are worried that companies are pursuing a digital-first policy on an ongoing basis, raising the question: Can video conferencing really replace in-person communication?

On 27th October 2021, Microsoft Teams CEO Satya Nadella, revealed that usage of the business communication platform “has never been higher”, UC today reported. Today, voice in Microsoft Teams is growing in prominence, with the technology giant taking shares across PSTN (public switched telephone network) and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Microsoft notes how 138 organisations currently have more than 100,000 users, with 3000 businesses over the 10,000 user number.

Looking ahead, businesses will need to use the technology to focus on overcoming customer service overload requirements and bolstering supply chain resilience. In the first quarter of 2021, Microsoft’s sales were at a total of £33 billion ($45.3 billion), a 22% rise on the same period in 2020.

“The case for digital transformation has never been more urgent or more clear,” Nadella said, reported in CRN. “We are innovating to empower people to have an impact from home, in the office and anywhere in between,” Nadella added. Stating that Microsoft Teams is the only technological solution that supports all the different ways we work today, the household name has seen the use of Teams as a deployment platform for apps increase too. In fact, Microsoft has seen an 82% increase year-on-year in the number of companies with more than 10,000 users integrating third-party and line-of-business apps with Teams.

2. Moving on-premise systems to the cloud

To maximise security, strengthen internal infrastructure, ensure connectivity and encourage open communication across teams, many companies are implementing on-premise systems and taking these onto the cloud. On-premise infrastructure, or private cloud as it is otherwise known, is a particular type of cloud environment that is only available to one customer. In addition to its security and connectivity benefits, introducing on-premise systems to the cloud in your workplace gives companies comprehensive access to all of the resources gathered in a private cloud and avoids having to share resources with multiple customers.

According to recent research by IT service specialists, Accenture, 70% of public sector workers consider migration to the cloud as a core component in the transformation of key models and systems over the next three years. A total of 72% of IT decision-makers in the private sector see increased efficiency as the main influence behind the adoption of cloud.

Cloud identity systems are only set to increase as we continue to engage in WFH, hybrid working models and software as a service (SaaS). Best of all, a cloud-based strategy that is identity-focused and operates on the principles of zero-trust allows data centre leaders to confirm resources and provide access to personnel regardless of whether they are on-premise, in the cloud or widely distributed.

Despite favorability towards these models, many teams are unaware of the best way to invest in cloud migration, particularly as the demands of the hybrid working environment put added time pressure on decision making.

The old days of on-premise servers protected by tough perimeters and locally-managed servers have been replaced by on-premise data centres that have the added flexibility and accessibility of being in the cloud.

With hybrid working among global teams commonplace today, trusting a person trying to log on purely because of their location is no longer possible. Robust authentication and sophisticated policy controls are, therefore, vital. Identity detection and response are also crucial as valid technology to ensure security. Using on-premise systems in the cloud also provides additional security as businesses must have a proven authentication identity for the organisation to be granted access. With a single sign-on solution, it means businesses move to a zero-trust principle, therefore maximising their IT security by preventing uninvited visitors from accessing their systems.

Contemporary web-based solutions and best practices, particularly in relation to cyber security, offer reassurance to businesses that their systems, strategies and teams are effective in the hybrid environment. A recent survey by Identity Defined Security Alliance revealed how 93% of organizations say that zero trust is strategic to security, while 97% say that identity is a key element of implementing a zero-trust strategy. Cloud providers use tools such as web application firewall (WAF) and the intrusion prevention system (IPS) and distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) protection to mitigate the risk against security threats.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is proving a helpful component in the cloud-based environment, with Cloud Native IoT now transforming many businesses’ IT infrastructure. Cloud Native IoT refers to IoT devices that can securely talk to one another and the cloud. Cloud applications also effectively use available and contemporary cloud architecture to showcase serverless computing, offering high performance, quality communication and strong connectivity.

Google, Facebook and Netflix have embraced cloud-native technology techniques. The more sophisticated cloud-native technologies become, to meet ever-evolving and advancing IT customers’ demands, the more adept the solutions are at improving customer experience, enabling scalability throughout teams situated in multiple locations, and increasing profitability.

Cloud-native itself refers to a type of application that has been conceptualised and produced to access cloud computing’s key benefits; those that are specific to that application’s purpose and needs. IoT has been a key driving force behind the increasingly advancing development of cloud computing, which utilizes modern cloud resources and scaling opportunities. As businesses look at both their external technological forums and internal communications, cloud-native applications are increasingly helping businesses to strengthen their hybrid working landscapes.

Ultimately, cloud-based hosting systems are valued throughout operations, for their enterprise resource planning (ERP) capabilities as well as the opportunities they provide in key departments such as core finance, procurement and HR systems. Cloud enables companies to move towards the latest technology platforms and centralise management systems to provide IT leaders with greater scalability and flexibility, leading to increased levels of security.

3. Document handling

Document management and automation software is a safe and secure way to communicate transparently with teams, departments and individual members of staff, while ensuring compliance with business policies and practices. Digital solutions such as Net Documents, a cloud-based document and email management service, take a business’s data and puts it into the cloud, providing real-time collaboration and updates on business performance and functioning. The software’s real-time capabilities enable individuals to see all areas of its business, providing information on areas to improve as well as indicating any areas of disruption or below-optimum processes.

Net Documents, in particular, maximises security by producing audit trails and offering secure governance through simplified storage options and document protection. As a result, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and IT managers have the reassurance that the business’s data is secure. Protected and easily accessible when they or the appropriate personnel require access to it—whether this access is required on-site or virtually.

Accessing the right technology for your business

A key component of the hybrid working model is to encourage open communication throughout the business and actively engage in it, starting from the leaders. Teams, departments, external suppliers and individuals need to be aware of key milestones when working from distributed spaces.

Anticipating and preparing for possible future scenarios has always been a core component in business. Now with IT infrastructure proving necessary in the day-to-day running of businesses and one-on-one communications between teams, businesses can be reassured by software that bolsters their ability to plan, budget and forecast potential scenarios.

For more information on how your business can maximise security, connectivity, productivity and open communication, contact ait Systems for support, today.

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