Cloud applications and decentralized network are important for effective BCP: Manoj Deorukhkar, Chief Information Officer, Sterling and Wilson

The IT team at Sterling and Wilson acted proactively to ensure business continuity, and had applications availability, collaboration, and mobility as the key pillars of this strategy, states Manoj Deorukhkar, Chief Information Officer, Sterling and Wilson Pvt Ltd

The IT team had already drawn its business continuity planning as a strategy that had applications availability, collaboration, and mobility as key pillars. However, the major challenge we are facing is due to the nature of disaster, rapid pace, and pan India as well as global outbreak.

The IT function moved quickly and set up help desks at every regional hub to enable work from home. We are educating our people to do basic tasks themselves and to use online tools for query resolutions. Making laptops available was a big challenge and wherever it was not feasible, desktops were installed at homes. We have also identified anchors at each location to help their peers.

There were online tutorials organized for using collaboration tools like MS Teams, LifeSize, and Goto Meeting. IT team also assessed BCP preparedness of all major service providers to identify risks, if any. We are using Microsoft Teams for internal collaboration and LifeSize for external parties. For document collaboration, we are is using SharePoint Online and OneDrive.

Work from home is not a normal mode of work in the EPC industry. Hence, it was a first-time experience for most of our employees. However, in a short time, our people have managed to settle down remarkably. A major challenge was faced, in a few locations, due to bandwidth and stability of home Internet connection.

Key lessons learned

• Having a well thought out BCP and ability to execute it in minimum time and glitches
• Cloud applications and decentralized network are important for effective BCP
• Single point of failure can be internet connectivity at homes
• Mobility is the saviour for situations where internet connectivity is an issue

Future of Work

Remote working is just not a signal but a verdict for organisations to move in that direction. Apart from a robust BCP capability, it is saving office seat charges and overheads, reducing traffic congestion and pollution, more importantly, it will help employees to achieve work-life balance and give more productive hours to the organization.

However, it also requires not just a change but a paradigm shift to more structured and consistent business processes, automation, transparency and significant upgradation of technological capability in facilitation and information secur