“Our approach was to ensure we delivered a transition service initially but then provided transforming capabilities moving forward.”
The above sentence from Mitel’s UK Sales Director, Nick Riggott, epitomises the role of the IT industry over the last 12 months.
IT providers needed to act at lightning speed to create remote infrastructures as we scrambled towards remote working.
Many of us took an ad hoc, that’ll-do-for-now approach to our set-ups at home, but it’s now become clear that the impact of the pandemic on our working culture will long exceed the relatively short-term restrictions we’ve had to live with.
This requires a different approach from both businesses and IT providers.
“Prior to the pandemic organisations were having these posturing conversations around digital transformation strategies and how they were going to approach it over the next few years,” Riggott said.
“But then it was ‘we need to do something’. They didn’t know how long it would be required for so there were so many points up in the air.
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Nick Riggott[/caption]
“Ultimately there’s a medium to long-term view around supporting a hybrid workforce.
“Organisations now need to look at all of their forward-thinking requirements as we look to the future.”
These forward-thinking requirements may, in part, require the removal of some quick fixes or applications used that have become more permanent than initially planned.
Riggott went on to explain that many businesses will have adopted shadow IT to continue communicating and collaborating with as little disruption as possible – even if this wasn’t necessarily the most efficient and secure way of doing so.
But he added that this is not sustainable in the long term. Businesses now need to add continuity, consistency and longevity to their communications strategies.
“They’ve got to try and consolidate that down into what is actually going to be required to deliver that continuous experience for all workers and ultimately for their customers,” he said.
“Shadow IT covers up some real pain points from an organisational perspective. It prevents from really effective and seamless communication and collaboration, it challenges security, it challenges bandwidth requirements"
“Some customers will have embarked on medium-term contracts; so, it’s not about capitalising on what has been an awful situation, it’s about delivering a transition service initially and then transforming.”
Helping, not capitalising
Riggott said that it’s been important for the IT industry to not take advantage of businesses that have been struggling and in desperate need of IT support.
He added that partners have needed to take a more consultative approach, citing the work of award-winning Platinum Mitel partner Olive – which was recently acquired by Onecom in a move that creates the largest business-to-business mobile, fixed-line and cloud specialist in the UK.
