A year on into the pandemic, even as lockdowns are being sparsely implemented and the inoculation drive is underway across many parts of the world, working from home continues to be the defining characteristic of the post-pandemic workplace. According to 451 Research, about 64% of businesses have enforced expanded and long-term remote work policies. At the same time, 35% of the surveyed businesses are in the process of implementing the strategies aimed at supporting a tech-led workforce in the long run.
A key enabler of this paradigm shift is the rise of new-age SaaS innovators committed to ensuring a seamless transition for organizations into the new normal. How? On the back of a holistic suite of tech-based solutions. Organizations around the world are leveraging, or increasingly adopting, such tools to power their remotely enabled workplace. Here’s looking at some of the top digital tools that comprise the essential toolkit for functioning in the increasingly digital-first workplace:
GoToWebinar
Seminars, training and conferences are crucial components of any corporate structure the world over. In the post-2020 digital-first era, organizations were need of a solution that they could use to seamlessly organize digital events and keep the stream of ideas, innovations, knowledge, and experiences flowing. This is the need-gap that products such as GoToWebinar are bridging. The one-stop solution enables organizers to create, manage, and promote their events over a single platform. Advanced solutions are capable of simplifying the event management by enabling the users to take control of the scheduling in a flexible manner, be it to set up a one-time event or a series, or deliver on-demand event experience to participants.
Users can also use the settings and templates from past webinars to forego the hassle of creating a new event from scratch. The latest range of webinar management tools can also empower the users to not only personalize the events in sync with their brand persona by adding colours, logo, images, etc. but also customize the registration process to capture the relevant information of the registrants. Users also get to map and drive engagement by using the engagement dashboard feature to track the participants’ attentiveness while enhancing the participants’ engagement levels and receiving real-time feedback through the polls & surveys feature.
GoToMeeting
Advanced virtual meeting solutions are upgraded to suit the post-pandemic requirements and deliver a seamless desktop and mobile experience to users. Products such as GoToMeeting are equipped with various features that empower remotely working professionals to seamlessly connect, communicate, and collaborate with each other during a virtual meeting. These include an screen sharing ability that enables the meeting hosts to pass the baton to anyone else in the meeting, drawing tools to offer a seamless simulation of real-life meeting setting, and a wide range of partnerships to integrate other tools with GoToMeeting to simply your workflow.
Features such as quick and casual communication and file sharing option, and unlimited cloud storage to record, transcribe and share the meetings with anyone further serve to elevate the digital meeting experience of users. New-age solutions also have enhanced audio quality to minimize the effects of poor network conditions, complemented by advanced background noise filtering capabilities. These tools are also pre-configured with cutting-edge security features to protect the users against cybercriminal activities against the backdrop of an increasingly sophisticated threat landscape.
LastPass
The task of preserving and protecting one’s data and privacy cannot be taken lightly. As anybody with digital identities spanning various social media platforms or business/professional platforms will attest, remembering multiple, unique passwords for each account is not easy. Part of what makes the process of recalling and managing passwords difficult is that we are living in an era that is primarily digital and we’re all spending more time working and connecting virtually. As a result, users have to create “strong” passwords that are not only unique to each and every online account and app but also sufficiently unguessable. The problem is compounded by the fact that multiple intricate passwords are also likely to slip from the mind.
Password management solutions such as LastPass resolve precisely this pain point. After installing this browser extension or mobile app, users need to create just one strong master password. The solution then takes care of the entire breadth of password management tasks. Features such as a secure password vault, password generator, automatic device sync, save and autofill passwords, dark web monitoring topped with robust security algorithms for encrypting and decrypting the data at the device level, LastPass enables users to rest assured about their data and privacy.
Bold360
Tools such as Bold360 are helping businesses to leverage the combined power of AI chatbots and human resource to provide seamless, real-time, and omnichannel support to their customers and employees. Organizations are increasingly deploying AI-based chatbots to resolve common queries faster over the communication channel of the customer’s choice. When the scope or nature of the challenge becomes complicated, agents can step in to resume the conversation where the bot left it, thereby delivering a continuous and effective experience to the customer. Besides streamlining the customer service process, new-age tools come equipped with data analytics capabilities to map customer queries and generate relevant insights that businesses can then use to optimize their engagement strategies.
LogMeIn Rescue
Users are not only using multiple formats and platforms to inhabit their digital reality, they are doing it via more than one digital device. With multiple devices per person connected to the enterprise network, sysadmins are increasingly leveraging solutions such as LogMeIn Rescue to remotely access, manage, and control the end-user devices to provide real-time, interruption-free support to more users simultaneously. Sysadmins can run a variety of operations using such products including running diagnostic checks, repairing applications, servicing the systems, etc. Advanced solutions can also provide a quick summary of processes, services, and applications to help the sysadmins identify and resolve the problems faster.
In the post-COVID-19 landscape, remote working is no longer an exception but the rule. Businesses are growing cognizant of the need for tapping into digital tools and resources to not only sustain but also enhance their operations. Against the increasingly digital-first landscape, only those enterprises that can forge a synergy between the tech infrastructure and the human resource will be equipped to effectively navigate the continuously fluctuating tides of the post-2020 business ecosphere.