“If you are a business of any size that wants to grow, eventually you reach maximum capacity for your area and you have to find ways to expand beyond your sort of immediate location. And the best way to do that is digitally.” John Bittner Executive Director Alaska Small Business Development Center
meetings with virtual meetings or other digital options,” Bittner says. “We're seeing a lot more people talking about the Asana workflow program and Slack rooms.” Video conferencing has also become a mainstay of business operations. “Zoom is pretty well ubiquitous,” says Vickie Kelly, the Alaska business development manager for Leonardo DRS, which specializes in offering broadband services, as well as technology support, cybersecurity, and network operations. As part of its core operations, the company operates fiber optic, microwave, and satellite networks, including a 600-mile microwave network from Fairbanks to Allakaket. “It seems like Zoom has really cornered the market,” Kelly says, though she does see some use of Microsoft Teams. “With the pandemic hitting so quickly, and people having to figure out a way to interact with their employees and with their customers, I think Zoom really rose to the top because it was free.” Additionally, Zoom developers created the hooks necessary to automatically import meetings into Outlook and other calendar services— keeping workflow straightforward for less tech-savvy business owners. “We're also seeing a lot more flexible work arrangements, even as people start transitioning back to in-person workspaces,” Bittner says.
Cyber-Commuters Part of the reason some companies are continuing to create a blended in-person, at-the-office environment is not just because of the continued presence of the novel coronavirus— it’s because both companies and employees have gotten used to the arrangement, says Bittner. “For the most part, we've heard that efficiency is not a real problem and employee morale tends to go up,” Bittner says. “I think that it's going to be particularly impactful in Alaska. One of the reasons being that we're a small population state spread out over a very large area.” The more flexible work arrangement allows smaller communities to have access to a much larger labor pool than they normally would, Bittner 22 | December 2021
explains. He points out that prior to the pandemic there were often attitudes that if a person had an office job, they needed to come into the office to get it done. “The internet is the great equalizer,” Salzer says, noting that those in Alaska who do have access to the fiber network can do anything anyone in one of the financial centers in the world can do. “One of the great things that we've learned about during the pandemic is we're able to do what we do… [mostly] untethered from a physical location. And we're seeing that with large corporations and small businesses alike.” Even before the pandemic, there was talk in Alaska that recent advancements in technology allowed people who had jobs in the Lower 48 or elsewhere to base themselves in the Last Frontier. Though the possibility existed, it was rather unusual for people to take advantage of it—even at the height of the gig economy, Bittner explains. “But now we've moved away from only high-tech startups [thinking this way] and now it's everybody,” Bittner says. “We're talking about counselors; we're talking about lawyers; we're talking about architects and general office workers. They are all very familiar and savvy with working remotely.”
Reaching Eyeballs Social media has also created avenues for direct sales to consumers that were less understood and rarely put into practice a decade ago. In Alaska, entrepreneurs can create Facebook pages, using them as a stand-in for a website while also making sales through the Facebook marketplace. “And it's not just for the individuals selling individual services, but you've also got businesses that are brand new and brought from the ground up that sell specifically online,” Salzer says. “Folks that were able to sell online and keep their products moving and their inventory moving really made the difference for a lot of folks—I know it made a difference for the consumers.” Digital advertising, already a mainstay for many companies, became important for even small Alaskanowned businesses.
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