TECHNOLOGY

ACHIEVING RESILIENCE WITH TECHNOLOGY

Digital Technologies are boosting capabilities of organizations across verticals, from education to retail, to continue their operations on a remote basis during the pandemic phase

— By R. Narayan

The world definitely entered a new era in the face of the pandemic that continues to throw challenges of the sort that humankind has never faced before. As a demonstration of its resilience and in face of stringent stay at home and social distancing measures to keep the pandemic in check, mankind has turned to Technologies to keep the world in motion.

While economies worldwide take a battering and growth forecasts have a mighty tumble, video conferencing technologies in particular integrated with several others in particular have offered a great way for people to stay connected with their workplace and activities.

Healthcare and law & order sectors are in the frontlines of the efforts towards enabling a successful recovery towards normalcy at the earliest. For many other sectors, their workplace has become virtual with access to their physical work loca-

tions unavailable or restricted until the pandemic passes.

Sunil Nair, IT Lead at Al Falah University says, “COVID-19 Shutdown has tested the sustainability of many companies. Transforming business digitally is a must to ensure business moves on. Gone are those days, when people had work from the office concept. The COVID-19 situation has opened the doors to work from home concepts. Many Online IT solution companies and IT Departments of companies are the major winners in this case. Being in the Information Technology profile, I consider myself fortunate to be working for a digitally enabled University in UAE.”

Reconciling to these new realities, various sectors have resorted to using more of video communication technologies to ensuring their workers stay connected and a semblance of workflow is being managed. The huge demand for video conferencing has resulted in a deluge of downloads of the various leading tools available, with Zoom in particular seeing a rapid growth in number of users until some security concerns were brought up. Several other vendors have raced to enhance their offerings and giving users free use access to their tools for the present.

Sunil says, “The Education sector benefits a lot from many cost-effective technologies and licenses from many tech giants like Google and Microsoft. Not just this, but many other IT companies during the COVID-19 shutdown have also extended their licenses for 3-4 months for free to help address work from home situations. Working for Al Falah University, IT Center has been extremely busy finding the best solution and has successfully deployed many new technologies that help our students and faculties continue education in the e-class model and avoid disruption in curriculum.”

Education in particular, faced with the situation of a massive disruption because of the impossible scenario of opening schools during the tricky uncertain phase, has accelerated towards going digital. Most, if not all, educational institutions in the region have already embraced some form of digital resources prior to the current phase and they have raced to enable video-based learning for students by integrating with their existing infrastructure.

The digital readiness of organizations has determined their speed to getting their digital delivery models in place to resume education or business.

As Partha Banerjee, Group IT Manager at Safeer Group of companies says, “Planning for the future always pays its dividends and this is one of those times when foresight has paid well.”

Sunil Nair IT Lead, Al Falah University

that connectivity, communication as well as collaboration are easily addressed to achieve outcomes effectively.

Education in particular has taken to digital learning in a significantly accelerated mode.

Shabeer Mohammed, Vice President - Technology Services at the GEMS Education agrees that entities that had already taken some strong initiatives towards making as many business processes digitally enabled are better placed to work in the midst of the disruption we face because of covid19. The Group had a strategy already in place to address digital delivery of education.

He says, “At GEMS, 2 years back the Chief Disruption Office was setup and the main objective was to digitize and disrupt the Education delivery to our students.”

A combination of technologies are helping cope with the challenges of not being able to conduct the digital delivery model of imparting education.

Sunil says, “From an education perspective, technologies like Microsoft Teams, played an important role in conducting online classes. Technologies like Google drive, Microsoft One Drive, Dropbox for File sharing and VPN made the work of our Administrative and Academic staff work more efficiently. At Al Falah University, IT Department have also deployed AI based online proctoring applications to prevent cheat

Shabeer Mohammed VP, Technology Services, GEMS Education

ing during online exams, where a student is seated at his/ her home and invigilator/faculty can monitor the student sitting at their home. Yet, at the end of the day, we try to remember that education begins with one teacher and a student – and a desire to make the world a little smarter.”

For GEMS Education, it has been about focusing on achieving three large objectives.

Shabeer says, “We ensured cloudification of Applications to allow easy access for all users and anywhere. We have ensured all access are available from mobile phones and tablets, so staff and parents are finding information and education material accessible at the click of a button.

We have also ensured that in no way student/parent/ teacher data can be compromised or breached so ensuring data classification and data leakage protection mechanisms are in place while the data is available via Cloud or Mobile.”

Education lost almost no time in moving to the e-class model and avoiding any significant disruption in curriculum.

Shabeer says, “The emphasis in Business Continuity and the plans on how we could move Online Learning was planned in advance. Students / Teachers and Staff were well trained on the use of tools that would be used for such eventualities. Documents/Articles on the usage of the tools was shared again. Videos showing the demo also helped.”

This also meant that the tech teams had to support this rapid transition to the digital.

Shabeer adds, “Our Technology team had to stretch to ensure everyone was aware of the access and usage. Hotlines and Call centres were put up immediately to help Parents and Teachers in helping and guiding them transition to E-learning.”

The technology support teams have been kept on their toes in ensuring disruption is minimal, if at all. For the education sector indeed, it has meant some hand holding to help users negotiate the way around to get familiarized with how all of it works.

Sunil says, “The IT Department at Al Falah University is extremely busy assisting users and enabling new technologies. The IT Department has managed to make the education reachable to all our students online during this COVID-19 Lockdown. We have ensured that we deliver solutions, that are the best in the industry and cybersecurity front.”

The massive shift has not been without challenges and though the transition has taken the majority of users by surprise, they are adapting successfully.

Shabeer says, “It's a change and initial days are tough during the un-announced transition. So initially it was difficult for staff and students but swiftly they adopted the usage which they were already trained on. They don’t feel the difference and are able to get more time educating the students with very little disturbance.”

Once the pandemic is under greater control and we limp back to greater normalcy in terms of routines, there is a fat chance that some of the advances we have been forced into in terms of using more technology will stay on. Business travel is going to be lesser possibly than before and work from home measures may seem as a possible option for several jobs, based on specific company policies.

According to Shabeer, “once normalcy is restored, the world will be a new place with companies facing multiple challenges to come back to status quo. All the initiatives introduced during this period will help drive efficiencies and speed up digitization drive at a even more faster pace.”

For retail and similar sectors, the challenges have been a little different as work from home options are not entirely possible and they need to at least have some skeletal operations on premise. However, they too have geared up to enhance both the backend and frontend of their IT infrastructure. Partha says, “ Broadly speaking, primarily, we have en

hanced the bandwidth, tools for remote connectivity and the security at the gateways. Our business model does not support WFH. Hence it could not be incorporated across the board. But for specific employees who could be and had to be allowed for WFH, we deployed Accops Hysecure Connectivity Solution.

As customers stay at home, a lot more of business is happening in e-commerce vis-a-vis the physical store shopping and this has enforced companies to accelerate their e-tailing initiatives.

Partha elaborates, “With the time bound regulations on movement the footfalls have fallen in all the stores and markets. People have no other option but to go for online shopping. In view of the restricted timings of the showrooms, we have revamped our online ordering process for the Novelty division and would be launching a fullfledged e-commerce site for our FMCG division.”

He elaborates further, “We are in the process of deploying an online store for the FMCG Department. It should be operational very soon. Besides enabling the e-tailing operations, we have also automated the processing of business transaction documents. The IT team has been involved right from the stage of designing the model of e-commerce suitable to our operations, evaluation and selection of the vendor and in the implementation of the solution. IT has played its role in setting the standard of operations for both the end users as well as the suppliers to ensure that the compliance standards are met. IT has also reworked on the SCM process and ensured that it is technically and operationally in sync with the e-commerce model. Finally, IT has incorporated Digital Signing for all applicable documents.”

Enabling technologies for operations is not completed without ensuring they are secured. Therefore, cybersecurity has been a key aspect as well at Safeer.

Partha adds, “To address cybersecurity requirements, we have deployed multiple layers of security. With the enhancement of the e-commerce activities, the IT team has reviewed and modified the policies and brought in some relevant changes particularly for the Finance Department.”

A change for now, and forever?

The successful continuum achieved with leveraging a digital model for delivery for education means to some extent for sure and on case by case basis, education has changed forever.

Sunil comments, “The feedback is wonderful to the virtual classroom teaching. The staff and students had never experienced first-hand these technologies previously. People who stayed away from technologies are now ready to learn

Partha Banerjee Group IT Manager Safeer Group of Companies

new systems to make their education continue from home. Online virtual classroom and exam solutions have proved that you don’t have to visit schools and colleges personally.”

The key has been the ability to communicate on a one-tomany basis successfully through video collaboration technologies in real time, a viable alternative to conventional gatherings, in a classroom or large meetings.

“While the future cannot be predicted, in any business, the key to success is Communication. It is now clear that you don’t have to be at the office to make a call to customer. Telephones are soon going to be obsolete. Online meetings and webinars are the future. Companies who don’t adopt changes will have tough times going forward.

Partha says, “This phase is all set to bring in a paradigm shift in the future of business models. E-meetings, WFH and tailored made office space would be the future considerations. Companies would reconsider the options of reducing OPEX and fixed overheads. The ISPs would have the opportunity to gain from the requirement of enhanced bandwidth and Data Security would define the continuity and success of a business more than ever.”

Indeed, when the world is safer with possibly an effective vaccine available, it will still be a new normal for all of us. We have entered a new era where digital transformation is a way of life.