Will Covid-19 Spark a New Dawn for Mobile Working?

The trend of mobile working has been gaining profile for several years, but I’ve never seen as many news articles about collaboration technology in the mainstream media as right now. Having potentially been exposed to the coronavirus, the number of people self-isolating is growing and quarantines have been imposed in countries including China and Italy. The outbreak of Covid-19 has also prompted companies such as Amazon, Facebook and HSBC to advise their employees to work at home. Many businesses are having to consider the possibility of regular remote working and online collaboration for the first time.

For the enterprise collaboration software industry, this is an opportunity to demonstrate the potential of its technology. Suppliers of video communication and team collaboration tools such as Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Zoom have introduced free licences and limited-time free upgrades to help businesses connect employees who have been separated by the outbreak.

These suppliers will, of course, be hoping to see a surge in demand for their technologies that extends beyond the current upheaval. The disruption has already had a positive impact on some providers, with Zoom and Slack enjoying substantial jumps in their share prices over the past few weeks: at its peak, Zoom’s stock rose 70% and Slack’s grew almost 25%.

Will the surge in collaboration tech last?

Is it realistic to think the current situation will lead to a long-lasting rise in mobile and home working? In practice, it depends how long the current outbreak lasts. If the impact on a particular business lasts only a few weeks, it seems unlikely that changes in behaviour will endure, either among employees in the way they work, or among employers in their investment priorities and attitudes to working from home.

If the tools that support mobile working are already in use within an organization, we can expect their adoption to grow much more quickly than they would have otherwise. But for businesses that are just dipping their toes into the prospect of cloud-based collaboration and communication, these tools will most likely be seen simply as temporary solutions.

If, however, the outbreak lingers for several months — frankly, let’s hope it doesn’t, but at the moment it’s a distinct possibility — there’s a greater opportunity for a shift in mind-set that leads to real cultural change and that gives decision-makers the time to think about how their business could work differently and how teams could work more flexibly. For employees, the longer they need to work from home, the more they’ll develop new routines, learn how to be productive away from the office, how to work as a team effectively when not in the same place as their colleagues, as well as how to take advantage of the technology to best effect.

But it’s not just about collaboration

Of course, much of the success in remote working depends not only on having the collaboration tools in place to enable remote productivity, but also having remote access to the core line-of-business applications that employees need to get their work done. These can be customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning and human resources applications, or solutions specific to individual industries or businesses.

If the crisis is short-lived, it’s likely to result in more strategic investment being made in cloud-based solutions and mobile access to critical business systems than in online collaboration and productivity products, because this is what will cause businesses to fully grind to a halt.

An important factor that’s often overlooked in remote working is the quality of Internet connectivity that employees have outside the office. Whether this is their home broadband, Wi-Fi or their mobile network, connectivity problems are one of the biggest frustrations for employees trying to work remotely. It’s particularly challenging for video calls, which place heavy requirements on a network, and employees living in rural or poor connectivity areas will struggle here.

Our survey research indicates that poor connectivity affects 22% of employees in getting their work done, with 16% of workers identifying limitations in their home network as a hurdle. If remote or home working is to become a more mainstream option for employees in the long term, this is something that employers will need to address.

A good time to test the water

Right now, we can’t say for certain whether Covid-19 will have a material impact on the enterprise cloud collaboration market. However, there’s no doubt that this is a great time for businesses to explore the possibilities. There’s more to successful mobile working and remote collaboration than simply buying the right tools, but having the tools available is certainly one step in the right direction.