Exclusive Interaction - Rahul Sharma, MD, India & SAARC, LogMeIn

During lockdown, WFH has necessitated the usage of remote work devices. Rahul Sharma, MD, India & SAARC, discusses some of this aspect with us.

Tell us about your experiences of 2020 during the lockdown

Rahul Sharma - In 2020, the global business landscape witnessed a paradigm shift driven by necessity amid the initial lockdowns. Against the backdrop of accelerated digital transformation, businesses began latching on to the existing digital resources – such as video conferencing solutions – to come up with a serviceable fix to maintain continuity. However, many of these organisations were ill-prepared and inadequately equipped not only to go fully remote almost overnight but also to tap into the full potential of their remote workforce.

In light of this need-gap, we found ourselves in a unique position to help our community by empowering our customers to ensure a smooth and safe transition into the new normal for their employees. We immediately started out to accomplish this mission by rolling out Emergency Remote Work Kits for the benefit of our critical front-line service providers who needed it the most. These included healthcare professionals, educational institutions, municipalities and non-profit organisations.

We offered these kits for free, organisation-wide use with a validity of up to 3 months. Since the announcement of this initiative in early March 2020, LogMeIn has given away millions of dollars’ worth of software, totaling thousands of kits while serving more than one million individual new users across the world.

What are the strategies to meet the post-lockdown challenges?

Rahul Sharma - Besides offering free Emergency Remote Working Kits, we started a resource centre to ease the transition of employees, students and citizens to the new reality where working or studying remotely was no longer an exception but the rule. In addition to the bank of educational materials available on the resource centre and on our social media channels, LogMeIn staff and third-party experts continue to empower IT teams, managers, school admins, local authorities and business leaders with tips and best practices about mastering the WFH paradigm.

As WFH became the norm in the early months of the pandemic, our remote working products registered a huge rise in their usage. GoToMeeting, for instance, saw a 10x increase in usage on average, with the mobile downloads undergoing a spike of over 600% on Android and over 370% on iOS. In the wake of the growing demand for our GoToMeeting product, we enriched it with new integrations, including one with Microsoft Teams. Further, we updated the product in sync with post-pandemic requirements to enable a seamless desktop and mobile experience for our users.

For instance, we enhanced the audio quality to minimise delay and packet loss due to errors in data transmission to ensure that users can connect with others despite poor network conditions. We introduced better filtering of the background noise so that participants in a meeting can focus on the presentation without being distracted by the noises in the participants’ surroundings. We also made our product safer and more reliable to keep the users protected against cybercriminal activities that rose amid the pandemic. To achieve this, we introduced security features such as Secure Socket Layer Encryption, AES-256 Bit Encryption, a SOC2 Certified Data Center, Rich Based Authentication, and HIPAA readiness, among others, into the platform.

We also ramped up the strength of our staff in order to keep up with the surging quantum of demand for SaaS tools and resources as more and more businesses continued shifting to unified communication and collaboration technologies.

451 Research shows that about 64% of businesses have enforced expanded and long-term remote work policies. At the same time, nearly one-third (35%) of the surveyed businesses are in the process of implementing the strategies aimed at supporting a tech-led workforce in the long run. In keeping with this development, we are constantly upgrading our service offerings to make them more scalable and efficient for our customers across sectors. Moving ahead, we are committed to becoming a key enabler of the remote working ecosystem and the workplace of the future.

What are the Smart technologies required for WFH?

Rahul Sharma - At the beginning of the lockdown, companies turned to video conferencing solutions to drive collaboration across the board. However, with time, the need for more advanced HR tech solutions was felt that could help an organisation carry out all of the essential tasks online, apart from communication and collaboration. These include, but are not limited to, conducting recruitments, driving employee management and training, providing constructive feedback etc.

The expanding need for more digital-based services has resulted in the rise of SaaS-based platforms that provide a unified experience to organisations of all sizes on the back of a suite of remote access and collaboration solutions.

We aim to empower organisations to successfully create a remote work-driven workplace by leveraging conveniently scalable applications designed to meet their business needs astride of quick and seamless deployment.

What are the customer expectations in post lockdown periods - both from the enterprises and from the SMBs?

Rahul Sharma - The permanence of remote work has now been more or less accepted across the private sector, if not in its purely distilled form then as part of the hybrid work culture with staggered shifts. In other words, we are living in the age of decentralization when the workforce can live in geographically separate places and still work together as a team.

In line with this development, we are committed to helping SMB and SMEs upgrade their digital infrastructure to accommodate an expanding quantum of remote workers. While organisations operating from tier-1 regions are responding comparatively well to the present developments, those operating out of tier-2 and tier-3 regions are facing challenges.

This is on account of inadequate digital penetration and internet connectivity in remote regions. Tier-3 regions are among the places that are just beginning to fall in line with the technological advancements, hence the rate of adoption in these areas is low. In addition, even if enterprises in these regions may be aware of the shift to the digital medium, they are not familiar with cutting-edge products or how to begin their digital journey.

To address this challenge, we are focused on hand holding such small businesses throughout their digital transformation journey, from on-boarding to execution, while providing strategic guidance and training. Our products are designed to be simple, intuitive, and reliable, making them easy to deploy and use. We understand the individual needs and expectations of businesses and are committed to empowering enterprises of all sizes.