By Cally Chan, General Manager, Microsoft Hong Kong and Macau
The Year of Rat has started off on a different note than we had all wished. I hope everyone is safe and healthy. Working from home has become a necessity. As the government extends work from home arrangements, many companies have also followed suit.
At this critical time, technology’s role to enable business continuity becomes more and more vital. As we enter the fourth industrial revolution with the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data and Cloud, the workplace is in the midst of an unprecedented digital transformation, driven by the rise of mobile and connected systems and the explosion of online data. This trend presents a remarkable opportunity for organizations to dramatically improve operational efficiency and competitiveness. More importantly, this trend allows companies to be agile and flexible at times like now.
Remote working: a new culture enabled by Trust
A smooth and effective remote working experience requires thorough planning and the most suitable and secured collaborative tools. And this is not only for critical situations but potentially a long-term new way of working.
In Hong Kong and globally, our colleagues are encouraged to leverage our technology and our collaboration tool, Microsoft Teams, to choose their preferred working location and time. They are empowered to work anywhere, anytime.
This is the new culture of work. One that is more open, flexible to meet the individual needs of each employee. One that fosters a collaborative environment that inspires creative thinking and agility. One that also rewards dynamic teamwork and data-driven problem solving. Most importantly, this new culture of work protects company and customer data and mitigates the risks posed by increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, all while minimizing total cost of ownership.
Nurturing this new culture of work inside your organization requires a combination of cultural change, the right technology and thoughtful workplace design. You will need to make available purpose-built tools to unlock creativity and innovation in your workforce, enable and accelerate teamwork, democratize data and analytics for constant improvement and address robust security and compliance requirements. Most importantly, it will require your company’s leadership and commitment to act as a role model for a new way of working.
Maintain business velocity and operations digitally
While remote working is the focus of many businesses these days, other critical business operations going digital is also imperative, especially as unforeseeable, challenging events emerge more often than ever. These critical business operations include event organization and administrative processes such as HR leave applications, Finance approvals, expense reports etc.
Companies should seek a platform that could support more than remote working, but also simplifying a company’s internal processes while maintaining the highest level of security and compliance. This also offers your employees a unified and modern user experience.
Today’s modern workforce expects a lot out of its technology. Not only does it expect to have access to devices that can talk to each other and update automatically, but virtual meetings that are easy to set up and the on-demand availability of mission-critical applications. By harnessing the power of unified communication suites like Microsoft’s Office365, companies can manage complex scheduling and combining best-in-class productivity tools with powerful cloud services that help take creativity and collaboration to new heights anywhere, anytime.
We are here to help. Stay strong Hong Kong.
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