| | April, 20228VANTAGE POINTTECHNOLOGY DRIVEN REFINEMENT OF BUSINESS CONTINUITYBy Vinod Raju, Head - IT & Enterprise Solutions, Expo FreightW orking without Information Technology is like try-ing to breath without Oxygen! It's just not possible anymore! In February 2020, when it started dawn-ing on us that the Covid-19 virus could result in a minor dis-ruption in our day-to-day activities (including perhaps, the inability to work from the office premises), we knew it was time for the 'Business Continuity' measures to kick in.One of the first things that had to be done, was to ensure remote accessibility of the company's systems & software ap-plications. This meant laptops with network connectivity for those `critical users' who normally use desktops. Critical us-ers being those personnel, who were essential in ensuring the continuity of the business operations during any emergency. Turns out that there were several such users across the coun-try who worked on Desktops!Laptop requirements were quickly identified, and ven-dors were contacted for renting out the laptops, as remote working or work from home (WFH) seemed to be a tempo-rary phenomenon, renting rather than procurement seemed the better option. This decision was acted on swiftly and we assumed that we would be one of the first of the blocks to do so. Only to realise that we were not! And had lost the `initial mover's advantage'. Therefore, the first challenge we faced was to procure laptops on rent across the country. Within a couple weeks this hurdle was crossed. Once the laptops were all setup up and available, the sec-ond challenge was to ensure good robust connectivity for our users from their homes. It should be noted here that several users returned to their hometowns which in many cases were in remote parts of the country. Initially the only connectivity that was available were mobile phone hotspots. Over a period as users settled down for the long haul, broad band connectiv-ity replaced the hotspot. The mobile hotspot became a `back-up' for the broadband.The third challenge for business continuity was access-ing the enterprise applications such as emails, operational, HR applications. Fortunately, this was not a big challenge. As part of our digitisation journey all our applications were on the cloud adopting the SaaS model. Hence, this part of the business continuity plan was relatively easy. It must be noted here that due to the pandemic and its lockdown effects; Cloud Computing has gained enormous traction.Challenge number four getting users to interact with each other from their homes. Traditionally the forwarding indus-try and its personnel have been slow adopters of technology. Hence initiating & training users to interact with each other using collaborative tools was a task for the IT Support Staff across the country. Users who were used to personal interac-Vinod Raju,Head - IT & Enterprise Solutions
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