Remote delivery empowers firms to gain a competitive edge

The COVID-19 Pandemic is a health crisis that has leaders globally grappling with the well-being and livelihoods of their communities, business impacts, and planning. The economic challenges wrought by the pandemic continue to mount—and with them comes much uncertainty about the future. In the financial industry, we have seen many projects pushed onto the back burner due to doubt. Contrary to this, it is the uncertainty that presents a rare opportunity to reinitiate or begin those projects remotely.  

The upside of the near-empty corporate office  

The opportunity presented by offices that are wholly or partially empty is unique. This rare circumstance offers an ideal time and condition to do a Network as a Service (NaaS) upgrade and replace the end of life networking equipment. NaaS will also give you the flexibility to adjust based on your workforce count. Migration to the Microsoft 365 stack will allow you more flexibility through cloud applications and file repositories while remote. Advanced security features to leverage and Microsoft Teams can enable your teams to collaborate more effectively and still feel connected. Harnessing employee ingenuity has become critical to the overall success, especially during a very disconnected time, such as now. Working together, people generate more ideas and feel more connected to their work, which improves employee engagement and productivity.  

Remote does not = lowered productivity or collaboration. 

At RFA, we have improved and mastered our project management process to tackle remote workforce projects. By using Microsoft SharePoint, Teams, and SmartSheet as collaborative platforms, we can offer seamless, secure, and integrated collaboration and communication. Our clients and vendors collaborate on these platforms in live documents improving visibility and efficiency across all project work. Further, we have leveraged intelligent and advanced automation to improve project workflows and dashboards to offer robust reporting.  

 What about the users? How are they affected?  

User impact is of significant concern in any technology project. At RFA, we take a detailed approach to testing and training staff that is always tailored to a client’s projects. We begin by fully scoping to holistically understand what level of testing and training will be needed during design; for example, introducing new products will require more training while some may require none.  

We then define what UAT criteria and what success look like. From there, RFA builds towards these defined goals and tests with a small pilot group. Once the small pilot group is complete, we collect feedback and extend it to a more extensive pilot group. Upon completing the second group, we collect further input and can prepare a tailored training online seminar and/or VIP training. Once we cutover the final group, we perform a final UAT. Finally, we monitor for 15 days and collect feedback for a final Q&A. This process is exhaustive by design to ensure that system requirements meet business needs and allowing for any issues to be fixed before the system goes live. 

 A proven process that scales in a remote environment 

Supported by the 100% remote working capabilities of RFA’s own employees during this period, the full remote delivery model has been smoothly adapted and enhanced with additional abilities, during the Covid-19 lock down. Together with the tactical use of cloud collaboration tools, daily reporting, and milestone tracking in tandem with detailed documentation, user-guides and end user support, RFA’s full remote delivery model has ensured operational resilience for clients, completing multiple client projects remotely. Firms should leverage the opportunities presented in the current environment and reinitiate or launch projects previously furloughed to create competitive differentiation and operational resilience.