Client story Software Developer Makes a Quick Transition to Remote Work
By Insight UK / 1 May 2020 / Topics: Mobility Modern workplace
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By Insight UK / 1 May 2020 / Topics: Mobility Modern workplace
Not every company can transition 100,000+ employees to remote work overnight, but for one company, this was just a minor bump in the road. Thanks to its modern infrastructure, the company was well prepared for almost anything.
While it’s impossible to plan for every eventuality, having a modern workplace culture makes it easier to pivot when necessary. Establishing a relationship with an IT services provider who can deliver supplemental IT services in a pinch is another secret to improving business efficiencies.
This was the case for one of our largest clients, who had been working with Insight for decades. We considered them to be one of our most forward-thinking, digitally-enabled clients. As their account executive describes, “what they’re doing now is what other clients will be doing in three years.”
Recent circumstances made life difficult even for this client, who was more prepared than most. Since Insight had helped them modernise their infrastructure in the past, the client was familiar with our work and knew we had the resources they needed to make a fast transition.
Luckily, the client’s mature infrastructure made it possible for them to quickly pivot all employees to work remotely. Their partnership with our Chicago labs allowed them to do zero-touch device provisioning and deployment to ensure all employees were equipped with laptops.
In the midst of this major workforce shift, the client’s service desk ticket volumes increased exponentially. While they had been using Insight’s walk-up IT support services at their office locations, that service wasn’t available to remote employees.
Knowing the state of the client’s service desk, we jumped into action to transition all Insight teammates from in-person to remote support. We created two separate support teams in multiple time zones so the client’s workforce would always have coverage.
Many Insight teammates also volunteered to take on chat support overflow in order to augment the client’s existing help desk team. They hand-sorted and pulled appropriate IT tickets from the queue in order to reduce wait times and keep ticket volumes under control.
One thing the client couldn’t maintain was their new hire process. As with any company, they were used to welcoming new teammates at a physical office location — they were not prepared to welcome new teammates virtually. They needed a partner who could help them come up with a remote onboarding process overnight.
To accommodate this, we changed all device shipping to go directly to new hires’ home addresses instead of office locations. Next, we developed virtual training resources to help new hires acclimate to their positions. We’re now delivering a 30-minute training program for each new hire.
The client’s newly remote onboarding process has been very well-received. Insight on-boarded 71 new hires during the first full week of the program. The client predicts they will welcome 500+ new teammates in the next month using this secure, virtual on-boarding process.
Since the client was already set up for imaging and shipping equipment through Insight’s warehousing services, they were able to make a fast pivot to remote work when the need arose. The client’s workforce is now 100% mobile on laptops using the Windows® 10 platform, Microsoft® Autopilot®, Intune® and Office 365® — all things Insight can enable for any client.
“There were some challenges to solve for and our teammates jumped into action to partner with the client,” said their Insight services account executive. “We’re supporting them 24/7 with no more than a two-hour response time from monitoring queues remotely and going into data centers as needed.” Due to the success of the U.S. onboarding program, Insight has been asked to ramp up our labs in Montreal to provide identical services in Canada. The process is also being duplicated for Latin American locations.
In their most recent communication, the client expressed: “Thanks to Insight for their great partnership during these very uncertain times…Our new hire pipeline is as full as normal, so we needed to come up with a remote onboarding process overnight. Our IT lives for these types of challenges and have risen to the occasion. But we could not have come to the solution without our outstanding partnership with Insight to be agile and flexible in our support.”