COVID-19 has changed the world as we know it. Most of the ad hoc changes brought about as a response to the virus will likely stay on, albeit fine-tuned in some ways. The world of tech is no different. CIOs and IT leaders will have to cope with the disruption and take proactive countermeasures to cope with the change.

1. The Work-from-Home Revolution

History will record COVID-19 as the biggest catalyst to the telecommuting or work-from-home. The benefits of telecommuting have been plain for long. Many enterprises hesitated to put it in place on a large scale as they did not want to disrupt their environment. Since the disruption has come to pass, there is no looking back.

The challenge before CIOs is to iron out the glitches and make telecommunication seamless. The onus is on them to:

• Ensure at-home employees have adequate hardware and broadband.
• Secure video conferencing and collaboration licenses and user accounts. Telecommuting increases usage of cloud-based voice and video offerings. Enterprises have to scale-up from hundreds to thousands of licenses. This makes securing licenses and maintaining user profiles more challenging than it seems.
• Work with HR to ensure tech workers work from home with the right discipline. Successful telecommuting mandates disciplines, and a dedicated workstation. For employees unable to work at home, CIOs may have to explore remote working hotspots or shared spaces near the employee’s location.
• Train employees on remote working. This includes tips on safe collaboration, how to access the company VPN, how to connect to approved services, how to keep passwords safe, and more. Employees look upon the CIO to offer fresh, informed approaches to remote working.
• Roll-out augmented reality meetings, as an upgrade over video conferencing.

2. A New Thrust on Security

Work-from-home teams need access to sensitive business applications. They need to collaborate and communicate with one another, and exchange business-sensitive data. Improved thrust on security for communication channels, with a focus on access control and encryption, becomes a new norm. Laying down and enforcing security protocols for remote log-ins to the corporate network becomes very important.

CIOs will have to make important decisions involving trade-offs, such as:

• Supplying every employee with a company laptop, or allow employees to work with their own devices, with strict segregation between work and personal data.
• Whitelist third-party applications such as Citrix, Microsoft Teams or Cisco Webex for remote collaboration, or develop custom software suited to requirements.

3. The Era of Digital Meetings

Facebook has cancelled the in-person component of the F8 developer conference. The event will now be local-hosted sessions live-streamed globally. Google has turned its Annual Cloud Conference, which drew 30,000 attendees last year, to a digital-only event. Dell has likewise moved its 2020 Tech Conference to a virtual setting. Several other events have likewise faced the axe or gone digital. These will not remain temporary aberrations but show the shape of the things to come.

With conferences and meetings becoming digital and business travel reducing significantly, the onus is on the CIO to:

• Set up collaboration tools, to help executives to partake in conferences and meetings seamlessly. CIOs have to provision software and hardware and set up conference rooms in offices.
• Set-up virtual classrooms for training and interviews. Extending the concept of virtual meetings, HR will interview candidates online, and trainers will conduct virtual sessions. Face-to-face meetings and human interactions will be minimal for the near future.
• Train sales executives, and provide them with the infrastructure to make digital presentations and make video calls. Physical meetings with customers and clients will remain unfavourable for a while.

4. Rejig the Digital Strategy

Streaming has become a new way forward for content consumption. Live events and brick-and-mortar stores will return, but consumers will prefer to consume from the comfort of their own homes. Streaming content at home, already a popular option, will surge further.

The onus is on CIOs to:

• Push more active online content and digital marketing, to ensure wide reach for company products and services when consumers spend more time online than ever before. Likewise, the onus is on the CIO to orchestrate an effective social media strategy.
• Lobby with the C-suite to allocate more budget for digital promotions and content. Digital should get a significant chunk of the pie made redundant for brick and mortar spend.

5. Rejig the Business

CIOs play a strategic role in today’s enterprises. Depending on the business, they may even have to partner in rejigging the company’s products and services. For instance, the CIO of an education business will have to orchestrate virtual classrooms and digital curriculum. The CIO of a food company will have to explore ways to strengthen online delivery. Several businesses, such as healthcare and cleaning companies face a boom owing to Coronavirus. The boom will probably sustain, as the need for cleanliness and precautions increase. Conversely, several other enterprises, especially those in travel and tourism will fall on hard times and will have to scale-down their digital footprint.

CIOs will have to:

• Scale-up resources to manage the boom, or scale-down strategically.
• Roll out field management suites to coordinate field agents, and conduct field inspections with minimal physical contact
• Hire new tech talent to manage increasing demand. Conversely, lay off employees and rehire talent once demand reinstates. Regardless of boom or bust, many CIOs will have to work with independent contractors and offshore tasks to cut costs.

A “new norm” is emerging on the other side of the coronavirus. The C-suite and the rank and file have placed technology on the spotlight, and rely on the CIO to tide the enterprise out of the challenging times. Businesses emerging from COVID-19 will be more receptive to IT conversations they hitherto put on the back burner.