5 minute read
Digital Transformation is the Need of the Hour
Zakaria Haltout, the Managing Director for SAP UAE, speaks about how COVID-19 has impacted business and the contingency plans the company has put in place in case the crisis persists or gets escalated
During this COVID-19 crisis, what measures have you undertaken to continue your own business without disruption?
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We are committed to maintaining visibility with our customers and partners, and across MENA we have moved completely to remote working to support our customers’ digital transformation journeys in this time of need. Supporting the health, safety, and well-being of our employees, we are neither hosting nor participating in any in-person events scheduled to occur in the affected months. In particular, our 2020 SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference are moving from an in-person event to an online experience for customers, partners, and guests. In order to support students, professionals and anyone wishing to continue to learn during this challenging time, we recently announced a new digital learning initiative offering innovative, interactive educational content.
What measures and initiatives have been taken to provide uninterrupted service to customers?
The Middle East is a global leader in managing coronavirus, with organizations using real-time insights solutions to re-design supply chain, procurement, and travel, pre-screen for health issues, and enhance remote working and staffing. Frontline industries of healthcare, pharmaceuticals, research, and public security need to access information, address citizen sentiment, and accelerate reaction time. Retail, banking, education, insurance, and entertainment need to enable digital channels. Wholesale distribution, retail, consumer, and oil and gas need to provide supply chain flexibility, ensure last mile delivery, and access to sources of supply and finance. For fields directly hit, such as sports, entertainment, travel, transportation, evens, and construction, and for companies experiencing demand spikes, such as telco and gaming, they need to evaluate viability. To help manage the impact of the pandemic, EY, SAP, and Qualtrics have collaborated on providing agencies with a comprehensive set of services and solutions to meet the initial urgent and critical needs of governments, globally. The services and solutions are provided in 8 languages – English, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, and Greek – through EY implementation and enablement services. These solutions include: • Qualtrics COVID-19
Pre-Screening and Routing, an online, guided pre-screening questionnaire. • Qualtrics COVID-19 Dynamic Call Center Script to help local governments set up call centers. • Qualtrics Healthcare Workforce Pulse to monitor healthcare providers and frontline healthcare workers. • Critical care protocol solution: for governments and ministries of health to early identify critical care and highrisk patients. SAP is currently exploring investment in TrackYourBed, a responsive, Web-based solution that indicates hospital bed availability in real time, as well as many other ideas that have emerged through COVID-19 sprint in the SAP One Billion Lives initiative, the company’s social intrapreneurship program. The SAP Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) team is providing infrastructure and accelerating new ways to engage through virtual volunteering and pro-bono consulting, offering more than 50 projects to date. SAP has also established a €3 million COVID-19 Emergency Fund to support the urgent needs of the World Health Organization (WHO), the CDC Foundation, and smaller nonprofits and social enterprises that work on the front lines serving local communities in crisis.
John Hathaway, the Regional Vice President for Middle East and India at BeyondTrust, speaks about measures his company has undertaken to continue business without disruption
During this COVID-19 crisis, what measures have you undertaken to continue your own business without disruption?
As a provider of Secure Remote Access solutions, which thousands of our customers across the globe use every day to support remote workforces, we understand the pressures that many organizations are now facing in response to temporary policies requiring hundreds or thousands of employees to work remotely. The balance between security and productivity is even more critical. As we comply with the work from home mandates across the region, all BeyondTrust employees work on secure, encrypted devices which means that during any period of remote operations we can ensure that confidential information and personal data remains secure. Additionally, we have Business Continuity and Crisis Management Plans in place to ensure that we and our vendors are operationally ready for any shift to remote working.
What measures and initiatives have been taken to provide uninterrupted service to customers?
As the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread across the world, organizations are closing offices and mandating remote work arrangements. This situation has put immense pressure on IT organizations and support desks who need to quickly set up and support teams of remote workers around the globe. Organizations are also struggling to provide secure ways for remote IT administrators, contractors, and vendors to access critical systems to maintain business continuity and operations. To help IT organizations address these challenges without compromising security, BeyondTrust is offering free use of its Secure Remote Access solutions for 90 days. The offer includes: • Remote Support: Enables service desks to provide secure, reliable remote support to employees both on and off their network. Support technicians can see the end-user’s screen, chat, elevate privileges, and even access the end-user’s mobile device camera to help them set up hardware and troubleshoot peripherals. Techs can support Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and network devices with this single solution. • Privileged Remote Access:
Gives external vendors and internal IT staff and administrators, who are working remotely, secure access to systems without requiring a VPN. This solution simplifies access by providing one secure and compliant tool that facilitates unattended access for all types of remote systems and endpoints. Furthermore, for existing BeyondTrust customers, the company is also offering flexible terms to add-on licenses to cover the surge in support.
Have you kick-started any initiatives for your employees to better handle this crisis?
Our employees are critical to our success and we are deeply committed to a strong company culture — one that fosters inclusion, camaraderie, personal and professional development and their overall well-being. To that end, we already have several employee-focused initiatives in place, including regular charity fundraisers and a weekly Tuesday lunch for employees to get together and socialize. From having to adjust to working from home to having to stay mentally resilient during this period of social distancing and sheltering in place, we realize that now more than ever, we have a duty of care to provide our employees a strong support system. To that end, we have launched a couple of initiatives to encourage communication and teamwork. These include regular online quizzes, virtual cooking sessions and virtual workout sessions. We have also set up new online channels so employees can continue regular communication — channels include everything from one where we can share how our pets are helping us work from home to one where parents can share ideas on how to entertain and educate kids during this trying period. We’re also donating the monies saved from our Tuesday lunches to local charities who are helping people during this crisis.
