The Digital Revolution’s Fight Against COVID-19

These next few weeks and months are going to be tough, really tough, but we will get through it together as human beings.  My heart goes out to all of those impacted by COVID-19, either directly or indirectly. Throughout last week we heard about organization after organization, in sports, in entertainment, in our everyday lives that is shutting down.  First, it was the NBA, then the NCAA, MLB, NHL, etc. Broadway is shut down in New York. More and more states are declaring states of emergency and are shutting down schools. Universities are moving to remote learning. The federal government has declared a state of emergency.  We are also starting to see cities and regions go under mandatory self-quarantine.  

In order to help our customers employ these, Cask is offering no cost initial deployment support of these applications until June 8, 2020 on a first-come basis.

COVID-19, over the next few weeks and months, is going to show our world where we are most resilient and unfortunately, where we are most vulnerable.  Our political leaders and media are labeling our collective fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, “a war.” When fighting in this war on “the virus”, the organizations that will continue to thrive over the next few months are going to have some differentiating characteristics.  One, in particular, that is going to be absolutely critical – have you joined the digital revolution yet or not? But before we can answer that question, we need to answer, what is the digital revolution?  

The Digital Revolution

Let’s start by defining what it is not.  

It is not relying on face to face contact to fulfill business processes (while it can include and should include face to face video, we’ll touch on that later in this article).  It’s not reliant on pen and paper to sign contracts. It’s not reliant on walking by someone’s desk to get support in-person meetings.    

What is it?

The Digital Revolution is the transition of manual and in-person work, to a digital mindset, workflow, and collaboration culture.  It’s leveraging the automation of processes to get work done faster with more transparency. It’s having a business that’s resilient in times of emergencies and disasters to prioritize the services that are most important to your business and customers.  

You are prepared if you have the proper policies, infrastructure and culture to support this.  

The Fight

Over the past few days, all Coopers at Cask have gone strictly remote.  Having the capability to get our work done using digital workflow technology, ServiceNow, and remote collaboration technologies, Zoom and Slack, have and will be critical for us to continue to work together to support our clients.  In addition, we are enabling our customers to fully support this unprecedented emergency with four new applications that ServiceNow released in their store. We started today and are going live with our first customer tomorrow. At Cask, we have always supported “doing the right thing,” when it comes to customer care and support.  Based on this philosophy and mindset, we are providing setup for each of these applications at no cost to our customers. You can get more information about this program by going here and scrolling down to #3.

Your Fight.  Are you ready?  

Since entering the workforce, I have been through my share of emergencies; 9/11 leading the response teams locally in NYC for US Airways, and the eastern grid blackout a few years later leading the response teams in the Northeast for American Airlines and US Airways, to name a few.  However, nothing I have ever experienced comes close to the duration and specifically the Enterprise impact of what we are going through today. Based on what I have experienced and what can now be digitized, I’d like to provide you with a core checklist (it’s not meant to be exhaustive) that you can use as a starting point to ensure preparedness.

 

COVID-19 Preparedness Checklist

Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery (BC / DR) plans to support workplace closure, high employee infection rates, etc. Leverage Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to support understanding which business services are critical and which should be prioritized for your organization Ability to execute critical operational elements in a health crisis.  Some examples of free applications (if you are a ServiceNow customer) that you can use are: Emergency Outreach – Notifies employees of safety measures and allows them to self-report health status, including located and safety status Emergency Exposure Management – Identifies illness exposure among employees; helps employee identify who else in the company could have been exposed Emergency Self Report – Enables employees to report quarantine status and confirm return to work Emergency Response Operations – Assists state and local government with incident resource planning and activation (donated by Washington State Department of Health) Clear policy messaging to your customers and employees that adhere to appropriate public health organization recommendations (i.e. CDC, WHO, etc.) Defined communication channels with timing defined to set clear expectations for your employees  Defined collaboration channels, including: Ability to video conference from anywhere Digital whiteboarding capability Project collaboration and workspaces  Ability to administer your key infrastructure and enterprise platforms remotely, internally and/or with external partners Agreement on policies and incentives, if appropriate, with contractors

Please stay safe and healthy and if you need any assistance, Cask is here to help.