AIS stands strong as backbone of digital life, underscores importance of readiness and flexibility across the organization in ensuring continued service for customers

As Thailand’s number-one Digital Life service provider, AIS plays an important role in connecting every person and organization in the country – especially in times where face-to-face meetings are no longer regularly viable. As a result, AIS sees the flexibility and continuity of business as well as the safety of its employees as top priorities.

AIS announced a policy to allow its 13,000 employees to work from home from March 21 onward. This was achieved with Microsoft Teams, which served as a central platform for digital collaboration as part of Office 365 and enabled the AIS workforce to communicate effectively as they continue to deliver services for customers with no interruptions.

Woman in dark suit“The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an environment that is constantly changing. While the announcement of work-from-home policies was a sudden one, this did not cause any disruption to how our employees work as we have long been preparing for these circumstances under our Business Continuity Plan (BCP),” said Ms. Kantima Lerlertyuttitham, Chief Human Resources Officer, Advanced Info Services Plc. “We executed our BCP from a position of complete readiness – including full preparation for employee communication and collaboration. We began implementing Office 365, Microsoft Teams, and OneDrive across the entire company from December 2019 onward in order to facilitate more convenient collaboration. This gives every team greater flexibility. We also encourage our staff to support each other, while digital skills development is brought on as a long-term undertaking that builds upon each employee’s existing expertise from their work in bringing these solutions to our corporate customers.”

AIS employees are using Microsoft Teams for conversations across teams and departments, file sharing with no size restriction, and remote meetings with screen sharing to minimize the need for physical meetings. These features are accessible on any device – from desktops and laptops to smartphones and tablets. Furthermore, every AIS employee has access to 1TB of cloud storage on OneDrive, allowing them to save documents for remote access from anywhere at no extra cost.

Throughout the beginning of 2020, AIS organized its internal activities and communications with the goal of empowering employees to fully utilize the potential of Microsoft Teams. In addition to online training courses through the internal LearnDi platform, AIS sought out star employees with deep understanding of Microsoft technology to function as “superusers” who can share their expertise with fellow employees and reduce the volume of support requests that IT teams have to cope with.

With extensive preparation prior to the current critical situation, AIS employees entered the work-from-home phase with a good understanding of Microsoft Teams, enabling them to quickly adapt to new circumstances with capable tools. In addition to handling day-to-day communication and remote meetings, Microsoft Teams has also been utilized creatively as a platform for other purposes – including media interviews with executives. Teams supports up to 250 participants in a group conversation and delivers excellent security features, making it highly suitable for engagements that require social distancing while also fulfilling business and service continuity needs.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed our behaviors in every way, signifying the start of total digital transformation in our society. With productivity going online for everyone, work is no longer limited to the confines of physical space. It is now vital for organizations to have capable tools that enhance digital productivity, and AIS is ready to let employees adapt these technologies in creative ways to empower the business today and tomorrow,” added Ms. Kantima.