Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic, redefining its customer engagements in the New Normal

The pandemic has ushered in a slew of changes in our lives in a matter of months. COVID-19, lockdown of the entire country, and 100% Work from Home (WFH) are some unusual phenomena that have taken place over the last few months. This has brought a 360-degree change in people’s daily lives, with only a handful of organizations preparedto cope up with this new normal.In a chat with VARINDIA, Tarun Seth, MD, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic, talks about a spike in the remote workforce and how Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic is addressing the challenges of WFH, Remote Work Solutions (RWS),BCP,etc.  

There is an unprecedented spike in remote work today. How are your customers geared up for this new age of remote workforce?

Surely.These unprecedented times have taken everyone and every walk of life by surprise - from the normal working culture to a lockdown state, where nothing but essentials could move. It was a time when no one was sure about COVID-19 and how long would there be a state of suspension. Customers had planned BCP/WFH for 20% to 30% of employees or processes, but the current situation invoked a 100% BCP status. Yes, some customers were better prepared, but most of them were not. The past few monthshave been interesting in the space of new technology adoption.The key ingredient to success in these challenging times has been our immediate adaptability to the needs of our customers.  We are witnessing how customers have changed their business processes in these challenging times to implement digital and remote workforce solutions.

As a leading solutions provider, how is Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic geared to address the growing adoption of Work from Home (WFH) challenges?

These have been the most intimidating, interesting, and intriguing times for businesses. As a solution provider, we quickly changed our go-to-market strategy in order to provide solutions and services to customers to adopt WFH effectively. We sold laptops and security solutions. Our biggest differentiator lies in the IPs that we deliver to our customers in the areas of remote management, automation, monitoring, patch management, software deployment, asset management,and IT compliance. We ensured that our implementation and support teams were available on ground to assist customers in implementing these solutions, and to seamlessly initiate WFH.  It has been challenging.However as an organization, we embraced the changeand stood strong with our customers in these tough times.

In your view, what are some of the key challenges faced by employees while working remotely, especially in India? How are you working with Dell Technologies to help your customers sail through these challenges?

WFH was always considered a thing of the western world. In India, we always believed in going to the office and getting our job done. We always questioned the effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of work done by employees working from home. As we settled into this new normal, we began to realize that it can be effective and efficient for a lot of functions across the organization. Some of the bigger challenges that we faced during this time werefocusing on our employees’ mental well-being and keepingthem positive and motivated. We focused on their health, mental stability, positive attitude, and kept themmotivated throughout.

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. With Dell Technologies,we demonstrated the true power of partnership. We worked with Dell Technologies to provide RWSfor our customers by delivering and installing more than 15000 laptops, thus enabling them to seamlesslyinitiate BCP. Together with Dell Technologies, we are also working on various business models and offerings to help our customers in these tough times, implementing solutionsthey need to run their business as usual.

Employee experience and productivity is becoming extremely important while enabling Remote Work Solutions (RWS). Therefore, RWS is not about just devices but the entire ecosystem like displays and right peripherals too. What is your take on it?

Technology has transformed the workspaces of today. There are interdependent underlying technologies which are part of RWS. To be productive, it is not just the device, but it is also about the internet connection, business applications, remote support, and most importantly, enabling security to protect the organization’s data. Therefore, organizations enabling WFHfor their employees must consider every aspect of employee experience and productivity.

Working remotelyis also leading to crucial data being exposed to cybercriminals. How are you supporting your customer’s business-critical technology needs with Dell Technologies solutions?

In a WFH scenario, the weakest link is the endpoint used by the user, to access the corporate applications and data. That is where we are advising our customers to enhance security posturefrom various threats. The first one is malware, attacking the system that may not be adequately protected. Dell Technologies offers next-gen endpoint security solutions that can protect the user from all kinds of attacks, including the latest zero-day attacks for which no signature is available. We are helping organizations to put checks on the end user system that ensuresthe corporate data is not accessible unless the system is up to date. We are deploying data protection solutions on the endpoint to ensure that corporate data cannot be sent outside without an authorization.

As a leading player into IT Services and Solution in the country, can you share your experience of working with Dell Technologies? How is Dell Technologies helping you address the new customer challenges with regard to RWS?

As we prepare our organization for a post COVIDera, our strategy has evolved too. Our strategic focus is to drive growth and enable our customers with solutions which blend with their digital ecosystem to propel their organization through the uncertainties. Dell Technologies fits right into our strategic goals to create remote and secure working environment for our customers. To meet the dynamic demands of customers, we are collaborating on HCI and cloud technologies to move applications to and from on-premises to cloud.