Happy New Year! The new year always sparks a little more hope and energy to get things organized and in order, a chance to start fresh. 2020 had us all playing a little dodgeball. Last year taught us that we need to keep our eye on the ball and quickly maneuver to react quickly to major change and staff shortages. Many organizations were forced to shift to remote working, companies had to scramble to provide remote access to many, if not most, employees, and some found themselves without support as resources were unavailable.
We saw a trend in the immediate need for remote support. Lean organizations found that a resource could be out and unavailable for a longer duration than just the standard vacation and without any notice. New and old customers had immediate emergency needs requiring a back fill. Organizations have been forced to look closer at business continuity and resource strategies, asking the question “What do you do if a key resource becomes unavailable unexpectedly?”
As the year progressed and the remote working duration was extended, some organizations found that perhaps they no longer needed a brick-and-mortar building, looking into workspace sharing for needed in-person meetings or relying on video conferencing. As a result, we have seen a new trend where some organizations are starting to look at cloud computing and hosting to help further relieve the burden of real-estate costs. The cloud computing space has offerings from major players such as Oracle OCI, Amazon AWS, and Azure. We have started to work with organizations to evaluate possible moves. As the new year roles in there are many questions an organization may be asking itself:
- Do we need to improve our business support resource model?
- Could there be cost savings with on-demand support or backup support?
- Do we need our current real-estate or could we move to the cloud?
- How do we avoid getting hit with dodgeballs? Are we prepared?
In our own reflection of the year, we are dedicated to helping organizations answer the above questions. We are continuing education, building partnerships, and obtaining new certifications to provide the needed support. To help our customers win the game of business dodgeball,we have to plan and train. Our motto’s going into 2021, based on an updated quote from the movie DodgeBall is “Remember the 5 D’s of dodgeball: Design, Devise, Draft, Diagram, and uh…Dodge!”. For our training motto “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball,”(DodgeBall 2004).