Our global network operating centers are operational 24x7: Aeris India

Built from the ground up and road-tested at scale, Aeris Communications India provides IoT services that are based on the broadest technology stack in the industry, from connectivity to vertical solutions. In an email interview with Voice&Data, it's India President Dr. Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar shared details about the company's business continuity plan to deal with the lockdown and how communication and collaboration tools were playing a big role in enabling the remote workforce.

Dr. Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar, President, Aeris India

V&D: With India under complete lockdown what processes are you following to ensure the business continuity at Aeris?

Dr. Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar: Our world has been shaken by the unprecedented and unimaginable worldwide challenge in the shape of pandemic COVID-19. While the health and well-being of our employees, partners, associates, and their families is a priority, we also stand by our commitment to serving the clients. Taking cognizance of WHO data that social distancing in the fourth and fifth weeks after the first case is crucial to contain the infection, we mandated work from home even before the lockdown was announced. Before locking down our office, we successfully tested and executed a department-wise business continuity plan (BCP) to ensure uninterrupted service to our customers.

V&D: What are the initiatives taken by you to deal with the challenge?

Dr. Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar: To ensure digital access, our customer support and help desk teams are available round the clock over the email. We have also made available IoT device installation videos and self-help guides to clients. On the network connectivity front, we are working with the service providers to ensure uninterrupted connectivity. Also, our deployment and installation support teams are fully equipped to work from home. All processes related to national and international customer onboarding, account-related operations, and troubleshooting have been enabled for smooth functioning, along with remote testing and verification.

We have also built a full-fledged contingency plan to deal with any event. Our critical global network operating centers and help desk are operational 24x7. All employees across India as well as our IoT operations and deployment team members have been enabled and geared up to work remotely. Additional back-up resources in each shift have been identified to work in an emergency situation to ensure smooth operations.

We stay connected by holding team sync up conference calls twice in a day to check the well-being of everyone and to ensure business as usual for all our clients and partners.

V&D: Which are the tools that you are using to enable collaboration and communication between the remote workers?

Dr. Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar: We are using Zoom Video calls and Microsoft Team for both internal communication and collaboration. We are also using WhatsApp. The teams are conducting sync-up calls every morning using Zoom video call collaboration tool.

V&D: What tools are you using to ensure that customer services are not impacted during the lockdown?

Dr. Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar: We have been providing remote support to the client base in India and in the SAARC, APAC, and MEA regions. The list of tools used for customer service is exhaustive, but the commonly used tool for seamless operation and communication include Zendesk for customer support and complaints. We also use Status Page and SendIn Blue for facilitating customer notification tool, and device configuration tools Puls.

All team members are supporting customer and business-centric activities, working remotely for account operations, solutions, configurations, etc. A daily activity tracker is also maintained. Further, as a contingency measure, additional back-up resources have been planned in every shift of 24x7 operations to support the customers in case of any connectivity issue, individual’s non-availability, and unforeseen situation.

V&D: How are you enabling a safe and secure remote working environment?

Dr. Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar: In an age of global hacks, cyber terrorism, and in fact, physical terror attacks, the question of how to keep our employees, our data, and our information safe is at the forefront of everyone’s minds. We have protocols, procedures, and policies covering everything from virus protection to password policy to data privacy and access protocols.

V&D: Since not everyone in your ecosystem may have adequate online access at home, what steps have you taken to ensure connectivity for all?

Dr. Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar: Before the lockdown, Aeris established communication protocols along with empowerment at each individual layer to be responsive in these times. We conducted trials to find gaps across remote locations as part of the BCP. This helped us identify the equipment that was needed for all the employees across the organization. We have arranged additional laptops, multiple sources of connectivity like wi-fi router, wireline broadband from different service providers, data cards, and mobiles with robust data plans.

All our team members are fully enabled to work remotely and provide tele-support to our clients. Each member is provisioned with at-least two connectivity mediums: fibre broadband at home, while alternate connectivity is enabled with the USB dongle as well as the official mobile with a robust data plan. An alternate emergency contact number of each team member has been made available internally on the company intranet and team information portal pages.

V&D: What are the technology and business challenges that you are facing during the lockdown?

Dr. Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar: Much before the lockdown was announced we had successfully completed the dry run on making teams work from home in different departments, from the president’s office to finance, engineering, and GSOC to deployment and implementation. We had aligned our partners for the worst-case scenarios. While work-from-home is the necessity these days, we have always valued and encouraged face-to-face collaboration. Hence, it might be challenging for everyone to adjust to this new routine.

For business managers, setting and managing expectations on working from home means taking a big leap of faith with respect to team management. The biggest challenge is faced by our sales force who cannot meet the clients in person and our deployment and implementation teams. This adds to the lack of visibility of the overall business realization for this and the coming quarters.