If you can believe it, this August marks the 25th anniversary of Windows 95’s global introduction. The splashy new interface made it attractive to use Office applications like Word and Excel to get work done from home. File sharing was not as easy back then. It often meant listening to that scratchy din when using a 14.4 baud dialup modem to connect to popular services such as AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy to get Internet access. You had options to email your file, send it to an FTP site or save your documents to a 3.5-inch floppy disk or, if you were lucky, a hard disk drive.

A quarter-century later, a global pandemic sucker-punched the people of Earth. Our abilities to be effective outside the office are light years ahead of the days when 256MB of hard drive space was considered spacious. Now, every day with their bandwidth at home, people can create global HD video conferences with a single click. That is pretty cool. We are living in a true renaissance period of unified communications and cloud collaboration. The tech works.

Introducing Operate From Anywhere

Now passing the halfway mark of 2020, we see that a shift in thinking is required to better prepare organizations for the future of work. Frankly, we see the work-from-home era is waning in favor of what we are calling operate from anywhere. Rather than thinking of remote work as employees connecting to the office, we think the model ought to be the office connecting to employees. This elevates office and contact center communications and collaboration beyond tablestakes IT. It reflects the idea that enabling productivity and customer experience wherever and whenever your customers need it, is no longer simply an IT issue. It is a critical part of good corporate governance that is top of mind at the board level and the complete c-suite.

Rather than thinking of remote work as employees connecting to the office, we think the model ought to be the office connecting to employees.

So then the question is, how can we take this notion and use it to help our customers plan more strategically for both the short and long-terms.

The first thing we are doing is create a guide called “Operate From Anywhere: The Next Evolution of Remote Work.”

To quote from the introduction: “This essential 8-week guide will provide you with valuable insights to accelerate your organization’s shift to be more agile, resilient and customer-focused. You will hear from end-users, industry analysts and additional technical subject matter experts. Each will share lessons learned about improving communications and collaboration capabilities while concurrently focusing on cutting costs in your offices and contact centers.”

We hope that it will help you focus on nailing down your strategic cloud priorities for communications, collaboration, and contact centers now. It is operationally imperative as the newest remote work evolution begins.

Reach out to your preferred solution provider or talk with us to get tips and advice to make operate from anywhere a strategic part of your business.