Early in 2020, news of a strange new illness began surfacing in China, eventually affecting lives across the rest of the world. Our lives have changed a lot since then, with work-from-home (WFH) and virtual meetings becoming a part of our daily vocabulary. At year's end, companies look back on the year and discuss what really mattered during the COVID-19 pandemic:
“Like many companies, we were affected by this and our immediate concern was to protect our employees where the company has taken a proactive, employees-first approach to ensure that the spread of COVID-19 is mitigated and the disruption to business operations is kept at a minimum.”
- Forest Lin, President, Tencent Financial Technology, speaking at a fireside chat during the Singapore Fintech Festival.
“While we have shifted to a work-from-home mode during the pandemic, we continue to support our employees with the same standard of excellence such as providing virtual well-being resources ranging from work-life tips to social channels for bonding. And throughout this period, we continued to ensure our employees’ mental and physical health through our Employee Assistance Program (EAP). We are committed to foster a family-friendly and creative environment where employees are encouraged to reinvent with new ideas and be innovative.”
- Remco den Heijer, VP for ASEAN at SAS.
When the pandemic struck, many vendors decided to help customers and the larger community. Alibaba, for example, launched Project Sprout Up in June 2020. The initiative helps connect sellers with business opportunities beyond their home countries and assists them to boost their online trade capabilities. In Singapore, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) could approach Alibaba.com’s local channel partner to apply for a one-time 70% subsidy on a solution package that offers the platform’s paid annual membership and accompanying services such as set-up support and consultation.
"In March, OutSystems announced a community-based app development program to help combat the global pandemic and its effects digitally. The program offers the OutSystems development platform and along with development expertise from OutSystems staff and partners to help turn 20 app ideas for fighting the global pandemic into reality. Within the first 24 hours of its launch, over 100 ideas for digital apps were submitted, including medical equipment tracking, a hand-washing game, food delivery facilitation, pharmacy volunteer scheduling, and chatbots for virus
FAQs.
"Through the programme, developers are able to get free access to OutSystems enterprise-level
software, which is capable of handling large-scale projects, for the duration of the pandemic. The
program also provides dedicated full-time support from OutSystems Community Team Advocates to
enable, coach, and work with teams of OutSystems developers on these projects."
- Leonard Tan, Country Manager, Singapore at OutSystems.
Companies also announced corporate social responsibility measures. For example, Tencent announced funds in China and internationally of over US$300 million to be spent on personal protective equipment for frontline workers and other essential medical supplies; to provide technological support to combat the epidemic, and for funding medical research.
Other companies also contributed along similar lines. As far back as March 2020, Apple had already created a screening tool and resources to help people stay informed
about COVID-19. This was followed by a mobility data trends tool from Apple Maps in April to support COVID-19 decision-making, followed by a partnership with Google to enable Bluetooth for tracing purposes. In April, AMD said its COVID-19 HPC Fund would deliver supercomputing clusters to researchers combatting COVID-19.
Facebook has also been supporting global health organisations in COVID-19 relief efforts and healthcare workers on the front line with donations, and shared visualisations and data sets to help combat COVID-19.
Amazon expanded community initiatives in Singapore to help not only healthcare workers, but also migrant workers, the elderly, low-income families, and underprivileged children. The company worked with 20 non-profit organisations (NPOs) to donate essentials including face masks and hand sanitisers. Over S$380,000 was donated, helping over 143,000 elderly, children, and low-income families purchase necessities.
"As part of their charitable organisation Rapid Relief Team (RRT), UBT needed to get food boxes to COVID-19 affected families across New South Wales fast. The company deployed an Uber-Eats style app that was built in under 12 weeks using OutSystems' low-code application platform.
"Before this app, RRT primarily used emails and spreadsheets to manage logistics. However, with
increasing deliveries, they required an automated system to manage the process, and they needed it up and running as quickly as possible. Since April, RRT has delivered over 4,000 Food Boxes to people affected by COVID-19. With the app, RRT is now able to scale its food box delivery while exceeding the service level requirements of government and partners and is ready to expand to other countries to help those in need." UBT is a business advisory group.
- Tan of OutSystems.
"When you look back at 2020, it’s hard not to look at how the global pandemic has impacted both our day-to-day lives as well as business priorities. In January, I remember having a kickoff meeting with a customer that informed me that all work would need to be done onsite at their offices – no remote work was possible. This is an extremely common requirement in APAC and something that my team plans for.
"I’m sure it comes as no surprise when that became an impossibility with the onset of COVID restrictions. The customer ended up being fully comfortable with the entire project being run over Zoom and Webex as we all adjusted to life in a pandemic," recalled Ian Hall, Manager, Client Success, APAC, at the Synopsys Software Integrity Group.
As employees began working from home, Zoom in particular saw a surge in usage. "(Lockdown measures) meant that by April, we had already hit 300 million daily meeting participants, far surpassing our expectations," said Raagulan Pathy, Head of Enterprise, APAC at Zoom.
"This sudden transition to a remote workforce saw business leaders having to quickly learn how to empower remote teams, help them maintain their productivity, remain secure, and foster team spirit. But despite the steep and rapid learning curve, remote work has been proven effective and has become the norm."
"This year has seen what we didn’t think was possible – widespread remote work where everyone
works from home. Organisations have made significant investments to enable remote everything,
and it looks unlikely that we will go back to the old ways of working.
"The lockdown has turned working from home from an occasional perk to a key business continuity mechanism – pushing businesses to redefine their notions of workspace, collaboration, and productivity. Data from Blackbox Research found that nine in 10 workers are not rushing to resume office life, having fully adapted to working remotely.
"Beyond discussions on the new Zoom economy and how future home design will give rise to workspace planning, the rise of flexible work arrangements will have wider repercussions. Indeed, employers now have the ability to hire well beyond the cities in which they operate, making remote locations much more attractive than big cities where talent, taxes, and real estate are infamously expensive."
- Blackbox Research.
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Source: Dell Technologies.
Goh. |
"As an organisation, we expect that 60% of our workforce will stay remote or have a hybrid schedule where they work from home most of the time. And we are not alone in this thinking. The Dell Technologies Digital Transformation Index 2020 shows that 43% of organisations surveyed have around 60 to 90% of their team working remotely.
"Moving into 2021, companies must embrace new ways of working by strengthening their policies and provisions to ensure a smooth employee experience and a motivated workforce in a virtual domain. These collaboration tools will be critical in ensuring a smooth transition to a hybrid work culture."
- Eric Goh, VP & MD, Singapore, Dell Technologies.
"In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic became a tipping point for remote work. Companies placed urgency on offering collaboration tools, such as videoconferencing platforms, Google Drive and Slack. But work is no longer naturally limited by a physical office. It has entered our homes. Therefore, while implementing technology to support remote work is important, organizations should also create protective measures to ensure that it is sustainable in the long term. At EDB, we are proud to have put rules in place that help us stay productive, while keeping people healthy and sane."
- Marc Linster, CTO, EDB.
"The need to adopt remote working at short notice during the early months of the pandemic meant
that almost every organisation had to first formulate a response on the fly to ensure business
continuity – there was no playbook to handle such as situation. This meant buying videoconferencing gear and solutions, whether webcams for use while WFH, or by signing up for conferencing platforms like Zoom Pro to help them better connect with colleagues and customers remotely.
"Over the past couple of months, organisations shifted to a 'redesign' phase, focusing on aligning
work policies and practices to the new normal of hybrid working upon the realisation that remote
working arrangements would stay for a while. Employees were now looking for enterprise-grade
equipment to use, as the stopgap measures initially employed just was not delivering the right user experience.
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Source: Poly. Sayed.
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"Along the way, video became a common standard for meetings, even for industries which traditionally had been slower to adopt videoconferencing as a tool; telemedicine is one such
example. When people were unable to leave their homes while shelter-in-place directives were in
force, telemedicine providers found themselves ideally placed to meet the medical consultation
needs of the many working from home.
"However, as more video calls are being done, issues like ‘video fatigue’ need to be addressed too. Videoconferencing solutions will need to add functionalities that helps people manage their mental health and improve video experience for users. This can include timers and alarms that alerts the user to prolonged video meetings, reminders to schedule breaks, insights for managers to better manage and prevent burnouts within their teams, and more.
"Whatever technology is deployed to help organisations address the myriad challenges that COVID-19 and other crises bring, organisations would do well to remember that technology needs to adapt to the end-user and the problem at hand, and not the other way round.
"Looking ahead, organisations need to start thinking about reinventing themselves for the long term, as well as to take onboard all the lessons learned about digital transformation and making it part of their company DNA."
- Samir Sayed, MD, ASEAN & Korea, Poly.
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Source: Veeam. Spiteri.
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“This year’s national lockdown showcased not only the adaptability and resiliency of the Australian workforce, but of its technology industry too. As Aussie businesses were forced to work from home with little to no notice, the same was expected of the IT infrastructure tasked with keeping these businesses online and secure. With many companies equipped to facilitate around a 30% remote working capacity, the scramble was on for many to reach 100% safely in such a short amount of time. But Australia is adapting – and fast.
"This year at Veeam, we have been working with our customers on a global scale to ensure this transition is as seamless as possible, that their critical information is automatically backed up, and that their data is always available.”
- Anthony Spiteri, Senior Global Technologist at Veeam Software. Australia began lockdown measures in March 2020.
"Vertiv experts expect the pandemic-motivated investment in IT infrastructure to continue and expand, enabling more secure, reliable, and efficient remote work capabilities. Remote visibility and management will become paramount to the success of these work-from-home models. Already, remote service capabilities have emerged to minimise the need for on-site service calls, and those practices are likely to continue long after the pandemic.
"Any cautious steps taken early in the crisis will be accelerated as the pandemic pushes into 2021 and organisations accept these changes not as a temporary detour, but rather a permanent adjustment to the way we work and do business. Over time, what is done in-person versus remotely will change, and the change will be driven by customers looking to minimise their on-site presence. That places a premium on connectivity, remote monitoring, data analytics, and even artificial intelligence to make decisions."
- Vertiv, on data centre trends in 2021.
"It is clear that the traditional workplace as we know it is quickly losing relevance. The accessibility of the Internet has changed the way we work, by increasing interconnectivity, beyond the constraints of geography. Many businesses are now deliberating a return to the workplace, a wholesale shift to remote working, or something in between. Either way, it is likely that Zoom’s unexpected popularity would not remain forever. Instead, we foresee a transition and rise in the world of ‘hybrid working’, where the future still lies in video communications.
"As we enter the era of hybrid work, where businesses begin to leverage the benefits of technology to the point where – whether at home or in the office, Zoom is continuously working to improve our platform to enhance users experience and to better enable the hybrid workforce - becoming the most frictionless and secure video communications platform in the world."
- Pathy of Zoom.
While some form of remote work seems here to stay, employees in Asia seem ready to return to the office. A December 2020 study by Barco has found that only 16% of employees in Asia want to continue to work from home full-time after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. Six in 10 (63%) surveyed said they enjoy working from home less now than they did at the start of the pandemic, citing challenges in collaborating with colleagues, struggling to contribute to meetings and missing the social side of office life as the main reasons for wanting to return to the office.
As Dell Technologies, Poly, and Zoom's spokespeople have commented, employees want a hybrid workplace model. Barco reported that Asian respondents would like on average three days in the office, with a maximum of two days a week working remotely.
Respondents also asked for technologies to enable hybrid work. The most desired investment by employees, Barco said, was for better videoconferencing technologies. Almost four in 10 (39%) of the 500 employees surveyed regionally named this as an investment priority.
“For companies with a mainly office-based workforce, COVID-19 has been the greatest and fastest shift in ways of working that we’ve ever seen. While the world of work will never be the same again, the immediate reaction to the pandemic – that office life as we know it would end and people would move to universal remote working for the foreseeable future – already looks to be an overreaction," said Gan Ta Loong, VP APAC ProAV, Barco at the launch of the survey results.
"Technology will be crucial to achieving the new normal in remote and hybrid meetings. The message comes through loud and clear from our survey: of all the things office workers want their companies to invest in, collaboration technologies are the top of the list. To survive, rebuild and eventually thrive again in the post-pandemic world, businesses will need to invest in new technologies, redesign or at least reconfigure their office spaces, and give their employees the tools they need to work in the best way possible, no matter where they are located or how they choose to connect."
..And the infrastructure enabling remote work
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Source: Tata
Communications. Srinivasan. |
"While connectivity has always been the foundation of modern enterprises, its value and criticality have never been more apparent, and appreciated, than during the pandemic. Connectivity became the cornerstone of the economy during COVID-19, keeping enterprises of all sizes running remotely. In March 2020, Tata Communications catered to over 650 customers orders for additional bandwidth augmentation. We also saw more customers coming back to extend the data bandwidth requirement for a longer period in order to weather through this crisis fully.
"In the new normal, the reliance on connectivity and the appetite for data bandwidth will continue to grow as 50% to 60% of employees are likely to continue to work from home, and enterprises continue to adopt cloud-first, Internet-first strategies. With the workforce spread out, security will need to be ingrained in everything that people do. This has increased organisations’ focus to look at securing data connectivity."
- Srinivasan CR, Chief Digital Officer, Tata Communications.
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| Source: Telstra. Bates. |
"When the pandemic struck, enterprises were demanding lots of data network – to ensure their connectivity remains strong as they move to a remote work collaboration model. Our network – including the largest subsea cable network in the Asia-Pacific region – was the very first to see these data demands. During 'normal' days, our international network already sees a dizzying amount of traffic, but demands for data spiked significantly, seemingly overnight, by up to 50% during this period.
"Network infrastructure and unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) tools have played a critical role to keep people connected – regardless of where they are – to enable remote work and learn arrangements. Video conferencing and cloud-based contact centre solutions are some of the most transformative technologies to the enterprise that have kept the lights on."
– Todd Bates, Regional Lead South Asia at Telstra. A recent Telstra study found that 95% of organisations in Asia-Pacific have remote work arrangements for employees, Bates said.
A move to e-commerce
Consumers supported e-commerce in a big way in bids to distance socially, pressuring businesses to deliver more while often working remotely. Freshworks' Customer Experience (CX) Mandate research found that 72% of customer experience professionals surveyed in Singapore felt that end-user expectations had increased since February 2020, while 75% of respondents also saw an increase in overall contact volume. Since February, businesses in Singapore have seen an 86% increase in customer queries from social media channels and a 89% increase on live chat and messaging enquiries.
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| Source: TAG. Lee. |
“2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges to the offline retail industry. It is no
coincidence that the rise of Singapore’s e-commerce this past year coincided with the closure of many traditional retail stalwarts in Singapore. This shift in consumer trend extended itself beyond our shores, with global lockdown precautions hastening the shift to digital for the retail industry to unforeseen circumstances.
"With brands rushing to take their business online and pivot to a more digital-focused strategy, many often overlook the key drawback of e-commerce – the lack of personalised service one would get by walking into a store. This market gap is especially apparent in industries such as the luxury markets, where the customer experience is tied deeply with the brand’s value.
"Our launch of the ENGAGE platform has very much to do with this issue, but it is easy to see the emergence of more in-house and B2B solutions looking to address this in the coming months. At TAG, we believe that the way forward for the retail industry is to use technology to complement and elevate the human experience, rather than subtract and replace it."
- Edmond Lee, Business Development Director, The Activation Group (TAG). ENGAGE helps businesses connect with online customers in real time.
"In a year like no other, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated an unprecedented shift towards
digital payments. While China’s fintech innovators, such as Alipay and WeChat Pay, have been
leading the world in scaling digital payments for some time, the wider Asia Pacific (APAC) region is increasingly embracing alternative payment methods, especially mobile and digital payment offerings. A Mastercard poll carried out this year found 75% of consumers in APAC said they are likely to continue the use of contactless payments even after social distancing measures.
- David Brown, Head of Payments, APAC, Finastra.
Security concerns
"The pandemic has accelerated the rise of digital platforms for everything from financial advice to retirement planning – shaking up the advisory industry as a whole. Blackbox data reveals a 6% to 8% growth in the use of digital financial services platforms, suggesting that people may be hedging against future crises by taking more control over their finances.
"In the next few years, financial advisors will need to step up their game by offering tailored, user-friendly, and automated digital services that make them stand out in the new world of online advice."
- Blackbox Research.
"The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic effect on organisations globally. As previously reported (March 2020), threat actors will always seek to take advantage of major events or changes for their own gain. The COVID-19 pandemic presented cybercriminals the perfect opportunity to take advantage of global media interest to spread malicious activity.
"We’ve found that coronavirus-themed domains are 50% more likely to be malicious and that there have been over 2,600 attacks daily relating to the pandemic. Furthermore, new phishing campaigns impersonated the WHO and popular conferencing platforms to steal sensitive information, peaking with 192,000 coronavirus-related cyberattacks per week.
"The latest generation of cyberattacks present a completely different ball game as sophisticated cyberattacks are surging not only in volume but also in impact, complexity and speed. Hackers are constantly evolving their technology and techniques to creatively deliver malware. We’ve previously projected that the pandemic will disappear, but its cyber effect will not. This has now became a reality."
- Check Point
"Security will continue to be an important focus for businesses, as they seek to protect their intellectual property and assets. Our Global Data Protection Index 2020 Snapshot finds at least seven in 10 organisations in APJ think their existing data protection solutions will not meet all future business challenges, including cyberattacks and data loss incidents. Moreover, the shift to a remote workforce has underscored the importance of digital transformation for organisations – to innovate and rapidly put technology to work to create new ways of doing business. Moving into 2021, it is therefore extremely critical that companies and governments invest in even more secure, scalable IT resources to support high volumes of virtual, online business."
- Goh of Dell Technologies.
"With the remote working arrangements necessitated by lockdown and safe distancing measures, employees needed to access corporate services and data through their mobile and home networks, away from the typically well-defended enterprise networks with appropriate perimeter defences. This provides a vulnerable and much easier access path for threat actors to exploit. Moreover, the rushed implementation of remote working technologies such as virtual private networks (VPNs) and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) may expose enterprises with poorly configured solutions, leaving them more vulnerable than before.
In this disrupted landscape, enterprises need to re-evaluate the control measures that they need to implement for a more resilient, dynamic cyber defence strategy to operate safely and securely.
- Xiang Zheng Teo, Head of Consulting, Ensign InfoSecurity.
"COVID-19 has segregated the community physically and as a result, consumer behaviour has changed – we are all now taking our work, entertainment and even shopping online. Threat actors see this as the perfect time to conduct cybercrimes via e-commerce platforms. Just recently, RedMart experienced a major cybersecurity compromise, in which 1.1 million RedMart user accounts had their personal information stolen from a customer database, including information such as names, phone numbers, e-mail, mailing addresses and encrypted passwords.
"With access to sensitive information as such, threat actors look to install malware and even
ransomware on victims’ system by baiting them to click on attractive links. Here are some of the common symptoms of an infected system – new toolbars or buttons appear in your browser; a constant
barrage of ad pop-ups; system is slow and crashes repeatedly; and e-mails that keep bouncing. With the increased traffic in e-commerce platforms, and even messaging apps which support mobile
commerce, it is likely that attackers such as Magecart are dovetailing new tactics as we speak, and this must be something that cybersecurity professionals pay close attention to."
- Malwarebytes Labs. Lazada's RedMart, an e-supermarket platform, announced the breach in October 2020.
"This is probably the biggest shift I saw in 2020 – the extensive work-from-home arrangements and the broad acceptance of remote work in general. The challenges for IT departments to support this shift have ranged from securing remote access, maintaining governance across application access and data. The attack surface is considerably larger with widely distributed, remote workforce, and so I expect that in 2021, further work will be done to mitigate the risks around this."
- Hall from Synopsys Software Integrity Group.
Safe travel
Additionally, technology is being applied to help ensure travellers' safety during a pandemic. According to CatchOn's Travel 2021 Report, Australian startup Elenium Automation has developed a portable cloud-based kiosk that is both a health-screening device and self-service check-in machine.
Controlled via voice or head movement, the kiosk provides a contactless way to assess a passenger’s vital signs such as temperature and heart and respiratory rates for possible illness. These kiosks can automatically learn and make accurate predictions by looking for patterns while
studying large amounts of data. If passengers show signs of illness, the check-in process is suspended.
The technology has already been adopted for screening passengers by Etihad Airways and Australia’s Avalon Airport.
Robots are a no-brainer when social distancing is needed. The CatchOn Report shared that the Hong Kong International Airport has been employing self-driving UV robots called Intelligent Sterilization Robots to sanitise public areas since April 2020, as well as Whiz robots, self-driving vacuum sweepers that clean floors at the airport’s terminals.
And to restart global travel, CatchOn also notes that the International Air Transport
Association is planning to develop a COVID-19 passport app that reflects travellers' coronavirus-
free status. Blockchain will be used to handle the data securely.
Dubbed the Travel Pass, the app will display the traveller’s latest test results with proof of vaccination once applicable. The app will also include information on the latest travel regulations for entry to countries, as well as locations of testing centers and labs at their departure location.
The Travel Pass began a pilot phase at end-2020 and is expected to be deployed for Android and Apple iOS phones by 1H21.
Cross-border connectivity
“2020 has been an extraordinary year, with international travel all but ceased. And yet the closing of physical borders has not deterred our users’ demand for connectivity with overseas markets. In fact, that demand has only increased significantly. This is a tremendous opportunity for financial institutions to seriously think about and add value to inclusive finance.
“Consumers want greater access to global markets and that cross-border trade and consumption will continue and will be an important driver of global growth in the recovery from COVID-19. Tencent Fintech is committed to help remove the frictions in international trade and globalisation as we believe the need for financial interconnectedness will only continue to grow.”
- Lin from Tencent Financial Technology.
In summary
“The pandemic's most enduring impact will be its role as catalyst and accelerant. As this year comes to a close, there is a sense of hope and opportunity – however tenuous – that comes with the dawning of 2021. It is up to us to figure out how we can build ourselves back up to not only survive, but thrive, in the new normal.
“In order to emerge from the crisis stronger and more resilient, everyone – citizens, communities, businesses, and governments – needs to understand and anticipate the new dynamics that the pandemic has set in motion.”
- David Black, Founder and CEO, Blackbox Research.
