Dive Brief:
- Organizations that emerged from the height of the pandemic in better shape spent time and resources on their work from home strategy, according to a survey from software company Catchpoint. The firm surveyed 200 CIOs and 200 managers overseeing work from home in July, sorting their companies in top, middle and bottom tiers according to metrics such as revenue, employee satisfaction and network reliability.
- Businesses in the top tier were 33% more likely to train staff on work from home technologies when compared to bottom-tier companies. Employees at top-tier companies were also nearly three times more likely to say collaboration tools were extremely effective.
- Among the leaders, cloud played an essential role in the midst of the pandemic. Leaders were nearly three times more likely to say their cloud vendor enabled the delivery of services and applications.
Dive Insight:
In the crisis, organizations put collaboration tools and existing platforms under new stress. Now that the period of adjustment passed, businesses must figure out how to lay out a sustainable remote work strategy — and how to deploy the technology this will require.
Low employee morale and productivity are two threats companies must contend with as they emerge from the crisis, according to the report. Top-performing companies reaped the benefits of spending time and resources into equipping employees with necessary technology.
More spending is expected in the months ahead as companies leverage what they learned during the height of the pandemic. Though analysts expect a 7.3% contraction in global IT spend, companies enumerating their software priorities for beyond 2020 often cite collaboration as a critical area for investment.
To secure worker connection to critical systems and increase network visibility, organizations will continue to devote resources to cybersecurity strategies, as employees logged on from home are targeted by malicious actors.
