Organisations must create a virtual office environment for your employees: Diwakar Nigam, MD, Newgen Software

What’s your assessment of the lockdown situation and what are the lessons learned?
A crisis like the COVID-19 outbreak has caused a worldwide situation that is unprecedented for most businesses. The trick lies in taking calculated steps to mitigate the negative impact today, and prepare for the times to come , with intent and foresight. Digital has become the new normal with most of the organisations worldwide operating in a remotely distributed environment.

We have always focused on driving innovation and this crisis has presented us with an opportunity to enable businesses with cutting-edge technologies, helping them to not just survive, but thrive in the current scenario. The fact that we are a digital organisation enabled us and our customers to quickly shift to a remote environment, without affecting the services. Our implementation teams are enabling contactless implementation and delivery of projects remotely.

What’s your preparedness to handle such unprecedented situations?
Our experience of nearly three decades has taught us that global emergencies like COVID-19 are often beyond our control and it is important to be prepared. In addition to helping our customers in ensuring business continuity, we are committed to finding innovative solutions to deal with unprecedented situations like these.

Newgen’s complete development network and supporting infrastructure operates on a central system and follows a synchronised cloud-based continuity strategy. This ensures that staff working anywhere in the world can use the same set of resources. Our implementations globally are based on our industry-standard products and related customisations. Our employees across geographies have the experience and skills required to consistently support our customers in case of any emergency or site lockdown.

Furthermore, we are utilising team collaboration tools to reduce the need for physical interaction among our employees, partners, and customers. We are leveraging digital connectivity to successfully execute each stage of our project deployments—from requirements gathering, to project planning, to implementation and production support.

With the rise in cyber threats and attacks during this period, how are you ensuring cybersecurity for customers?
Cybersecurity is a top priority for us. All our products are secure and compliant with industry regulations. We take extensive measures to ensure the safety and security of client data.

Highlight some of the challenges being faced in providing service or support in the lockdown period
During trying times, our top priorities remain ensuring the well-being of our employees and enabling business continuity for our customers. The current situation required us to shift our employees and our customers to a remote working environment quickly and without impacting the speed and quality of services. With our digital automation platform, we were able to respond promptly and transition to the new normal of a digital working environment, wherein our customers globally were enabled to work remotely while ensuring security and compliance.

We have extended our development network via VPN connectivity, enabling our employees and customer relationship managers to work remotely without compromising on communication and coordination with customers. We are going live with new projects, capturing client requirements remotely, and conducting successful demos online. Our solutions can be deployed on the cloud within hours and are in line with the regulatory requirements of every geography.

With remote working becoming the new normal, what are the best practices that your customers should adopt?
We recommend the following best practices:

• Create a virtual office environment for your employees
• Tap various online and digital channels to ensure continued support and service to your customers
• Adopt digital to ensure business continuity

How would you complement in such a scenario?
Digital is a savior in times like these when the only way to operate is in a remotely distributed environment. Our digital automation platform is helping our customers run their businesses safely and securely without impacting the speed and quality of their services. We are enabling our customers to:

• Seamlessly collaborate and participate in business processes from disparate locations and virtual work environments
• Manage their processes, content, and communication while bridging functional and data silos, in a rapid application development environment
• Leverage digital intelligence, robotic process automation (RPA), and mobility for more efficient and informed employee participation.

Given the current situation, what’s your message to partners and customers?
Newgen recognises the criticality of the situation and is working tirelessly to ease and address the concerns of all our stakeholders. We believe that we are well equipped to handle the global crisis based on the business continuity plan that we have successfully implemented, ensuring the health and safety of our employees while fully supporting our clients. We are also strategising our offerings to improve business resilience for customers.

If you have an interesting article / experience / case study to share, please get in touch with us at [email protected]

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