Ask a CTO: What are the long-term impacts communications & media businesses need to prepare for in a socially-distanced world? 

As we reflect on this past year, what immediately comes to mind is the shift the workforce has witnessed. Businesses and employees have adapted to a new normal, to a life of remote work filled with video conferences, and a shift to living life in the cloud. It has been inspiring to see our teams quickly adapt to ensure security and safety for all customers and employees. As we continue to adjust to our new routine, we wonder, what are the business impacts of this socially-distanced, global-connected world, that could likely live on post-pandemic?

To answer that, we connected with Lumine Group CTOs to get their insights. Our question for them: As businesses adapt to meet the demands of a socially distanced, digitally connected world, technology must also adapt. What are the long-term impacts CTOs need to prepare for?

Look below to see their answers.

Andy Sweetman, CTO, WDS Mobile

I think the most immediate impact is that people are increasingly working from home and avoiding the high street. We saw an 80% rise in queries to our online self-care portal product at the start of the pandemic, while the number of service agents available has dropped by 40%. Customer management and experience was already at the top of the agenda, as is even more so today.

We need to look for emerging opportunities due to this change in behavior – primarily around enriching channels and engaging through them. We should also foster a cloud-first mindset, reducing the need to be on-site to deliver capabilities for our customers, reducing travel and therefore the risk for all.

Pete Koat, CTIO, Incognito Software Systems

Information officers should prepare IT systems now to safely and reliably handle a vast increase in remote workers.

As organizations become increasingly digital, the growing cyber threat could be of concern. All types of data held – employees’ personal information, corporate data, customer information, intellectual property, and key infrastructure – need to be secured. CTIO’s must review existing security infrastructure and assess what people will need to work safely. Consider the hardware remote employees will use (company-issued or personal devices), and the networks they’ll be on (public or private). Consider endpoint security for devices and robust identity and access management to allow secure sign-in to corporate systems. As cybercrimes become more sophisticated, CTIO’s must constantly update their security infrastructure and communicate the measures in place effectively organization-wide.

José Luis Silva, CTO, Collab

1. Security is going to become an even more important concern.

New threats arise frequently, and teams continuously evolve. The number of registered and contained threats has dramatically increased. Also, support for biometrics authentication and verification is going to have major importance to allow companies to validate who is really doing the remote work.

2. Dispersed Culture vs Coherent Low Code.

The good news is we can now hire from anywhere in the country (or maybe the world), as next-gen working strategies imply working from home.

The bad news means corporate culture for software development is now dispersed. It’s vital to reinforce software engineering processes to guarantee agile, low code, and homogeneous development. Also, it’s very important to maintain company culture and to reinforce it across all the new employees.

3. Go Cloud or Go Home.

Deployment of projects via the cloud is on an adoption peak, and every software module should be Multi-Tenant, Cloud-Ready, and Elastic. Also, the software should easily allow the “Uberization” of the business like for example contact center agents.

Eric Feeley, CTO, Telepin

As CTO of Telepin, the long-term impact of restricted international business travel means having to be very aware of each market’s regional expectation for meetings. It will be important to find a common understanding that does not put us at a disadvantage in relation to competitors that do not have the same corporate/national limitations.