Remote working during the Coronavirus pandemic

Please get in touch with your  federal specialist if there’s anything we can do to help.

The Coronavirus is spreading and the impact is changing on a daily basis. What started as an outbreak has now been confirmed a pandemic with more than 100 countries impacted.

Travelling for businesses and commuting to work are becoming harder or impossible. Working from home has taken on a new dimension.

Organizations are trying to figure out how to keep operations up and running during the outbreak.

This is where technology can make a crucial difference.

Our customers are asking us "How do I…..

• keep my business operational with people working remotely?
• manage a big increase in people working from home?
• set up remote or home working in a matter of days?
• stay operational in a virtual world?
• increase my bandwidth capacity in a matter of hours?
• keep employees productive if they have to go through a period of self-isolation?
• keep my employees productive if we need to temporarily close a site?

How we’re supporting our customers

We’re offering support to our customers operating in affected areas, helping them to keep their global businesses running by making sure they can continue to communicate and collaborate with colleagues, partners and customers all over the globe.

Some of the areas we’ve looked at are short-term upgrades to network capacity, increased VPN connectivity to allow for more remote working, extra conferencing and collaboration tools and user support to ensure continued access and use of the tools.

Some examples of how we’ve helped customers

• A global consumer goods manufacturer – needed to increase their VPN and MPLS capacity to deal with a boom in bandwidth demand due to so many staff – from across 50 sites – needing to work from home in affected areas – so we doubled their VPN licenses, increased MPLS bandwidth from 40 Mbps to 100 Mbps and doubled the secure VPN for regional customers.
• A global insurance company – needed to increase their remote working capability, so we rapidly arranged secure VPN access for an additional 14,000 users in two weeks, allowing them to work at home. We also added more rooms to the video platform and trained up their teams to use them. We also provided a short-term adoption campaign to rapidly roll out video bridging and enable video capability in support of their travel lockdown.
• A multinational engineering and technology company and a multinational delivery services company – wanted their employees to work from home to answer customers’ calls. We helped by diverting calls around the region, integrating softphones and letting agents take calls on their mobiles.
• A world- leading FMCG company – wanted to be able to deliver live broadcasts and video conferences for up to 300 users at a time. We enabled audio and video conferencing on an existing platform so they could. They also needed to cater for their increased internet usage, so we doubled their RAS VPN capacity to make sure they had adequate bandwidth.
• Governmental entity – wanted to be ready if there was a demand for extra homeworking if needed due to the virus spreading. We’ve committed to being able to significantly upgrade their internet capacity on 2 different links within 3 working days if needed.
• An international courier company – needed temporary / emergency LAN/ WAN services in affected countries, so we’ve provided these, together with fixed voice and conferencing options so they can consider remote and teleworking for their teams via call forwarding, number mirroring, etc.
• Generally - we’ve seen an increased demand for our traditional audio meetings as more customers work from home. To provide the capacity required globally, we’ve added a new range of dial in numbers for China. The extra numbers work with our Intelligent Call Routing system (ICR) to ensure customers get consistent service.

Our 3-step approach to remote working

Make sure:

1. you have the connectivity and infrastructure to support an increase in home working
2. you have processes and technology in place to protect your remote users and data
3. you have the collaboration tools you need – including extra licenses, extra capacity or enabling video for your existing users.

How we could help you – an overview

Next steps

If your organization is being affected or you’re worried it will be, please get in touch. We can help you design and implement contingency plans and share valuable insight into how BT and other large multinationals are using their technology to stay operational during this time of uncertainty.

Whether it’s practical help or reassurance, we’re here to help.

Please get in touch with your federal specialist  if there’s anything we can do.