» CIO OUTLOOK
A TEST OF RESILIENCE In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic lockdowns, IT teams and CIOs were called upon to rise to the occasion, enable remote working and manage those operations. The most difficult passage of time has also perhaps been their finest hour, in demonstrating their value to their organizations. — By R. Narayan
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t has been one of the toughest years for mankind in recent decades, courtesy the ongoing pandemic. The challenge continues as mankind awaits an effective vaccine to put the threat behind. Needless to add then that in the early months of the lockdown, Businesses were impacted severely. However, even as they couldn’t get people down to their workplaces, Technology provided the solution to connect and transact Business. The collaboration software tools for work from anywhere as well as other remote tools for network configuration to monitoring ensured that people in roles that used computers at work could carry on despite the unprecedented disruption. However, for those who had to be physically available at workplaces or on duty such as field staff, they did have a disruption in their work schedules, until there was partial relaxation and a return to work was possible with all social distancing norms followed. The world continues to cope with the pandemic, with social distancing being followed. For Technology CIOs, it has been a year to step up and they have done so admirably. Their role has never been more pronounced as has been this year. The companies who had implemented digital transformation even partially, were better placed than those who lagged behind in digital ways. The CIO had to be up to the challenge during the early days of the lockdown, in terms of overseeing the remote work arrangements. For the Lulu Group, the IT team has to meet the steep demand of supporting the Lulu Group’s vast scale of operations. Piyush Kumar Chowhan, Group CIO LuLu Group International says “COVID is a unique disruption which I believe no one was prepared in early part of 2020. It was a shock which has provided great learning for all enterprises in the area of strategy and working culture. The CIO’s office had to step up and play a very dif-
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ferent role to support the busines teams. IT teams had to respond quickly to enable remote working and ensure business continuity. Since we had already started our cloud journey and invested in remote working technologies, which helped us respond better. The only challenge was the speed of implementation which tested the agile ways of working of IT teams. It was evident that as the situation evolved with multiple lockdowns, there would be a need to accelerate the pace of change for application features and enabling the underlying infrastructure.” For the Gulftainer Company, a privately owned, independent port management and 3PL logistics company, Remote working and work from home were not new as the Gulftainer IT team has been providing support to their port operations 24/7 spread across various geographies. However, this was a situation on a larger unprecedented scale. Vinay Sharma, Group IT head, Gulftainer Company says, “Managing with 100% of our office based staff working remotely meant that we did face a few challenges; mainly team timings; isolating in the home environment where there may be internet issues; having to conduct all meetings which used to be daily face to face meetings or discussions across different time zones.” He adds, “However, the team was able to quickly adapt to the new work norms, many of us created an office room/space to ensure that we were able to focus on work during business hours and not get distracted by family and children. Another challenge was to ensure everyone maintained a proper work/life balance. In the Mohammed beginning of the lockdown weShabeer found that our teams were spendVP, Heading long hours working without the routine Tecchnology of coming and going GEMS Education to the office. With the help ofServices, regular one to ones with staff, team meetings, HR broadcasts and online collaboration tools, we are now very well adjusted to this new normal.”
