Anywhere Operations – The future of work

15 September 2021

Having worked remotely for more than a year many SMEs are now planning their return to the office and asking, “What does the future of work look like?”

The more dynamic, forward-thinking SMEs are creating a more sustainable ‘Anywhere Operations’ model for their business.

To use Gartner’s definition, Anywhere Operations is:

“An IT operating model designed to support customers everywhere, enable employees everywhere and manage the deployment of business services across distributed infrastructures. It is more than simply working from home or interacting with customers virtually. It delivers unique value-add experiences across five core areas: collaboration and productivity, secure remote access, cloud and edge infrastructure, quantification of the digital experience and automation to support remote operations.”

In simple terms it decentralises the way you operate your business. And by the end of 2023, Gartner predicts 40% of organisations across the world will have applied an Anywhere Operations model to deliver optimised and blended virtual and physical customer and employee experiences.

To make this model successful, SMEs should be people-centric and location-agnostic. In other words, if I am an employee, I should be able to travel the world and at the same time be connected with my work.

This means Anywhere Operations can:

• Support virtual working, where employees can access business data and systems through the cloud or via secure remote access
• Support delivery of products or services via digital / virtual channels where appropriate
• Provide flexible support to stakeholders, business associates, customers, and employees

Benefits of Anywhere Operations

1. Improved productivity & collaboration

The moment an SME allows staff to access data at any time and from any location it instantly boosts collaboration and improves productivity. Anywhere Operations allows teams to seamlessly collaborate from multiple locations, without the risk of losing out on efficiency and output.

2. Secure remote access

By deploying stringent security measures such as multi-factor authentication and data encryption, Anywhere Operations ensures safe and secure remote access. A major advantage is the ability to troubleshoot any issues in the business remotely, thereby solving problems quickly.

3. Coherent customer support

With an Anywhere Operations model, customer support is seamless and with no physical boundaries. SMEs can easily set up 24×7 support by having people deployed in different time zones or people with different work-hour schedules.

4. Empowering employees

Anywhere Operations gives your staff far more flexibility. It makes them manage their own schedules and empowers them to be decision-makers and not just order-takers. With no single physical location, SMEs can expand their talent pool beyond geographical boundaries and attract the best people.

5. Automated deployment

Using Anywhere Operations SMEs can easily deploy their products and services to their customers wherever they are. And by automating workflows, transactions or approvals, SMEs can accelerate the process, freeing up human capital. The transactions are done securely, using software applications so the physical environment is irrelevant.

6. Cost efficiency

Anywhere Operations delivers significant cost savings both in the short and long term.  There is minimal requirement for on-premise hardware and very few upfront costs. Infrastructure and software managed in the cloud is a far cheaper and flexible option for most SMEs.

How you can adopt Anywhere Operations

Anywhere Operations is all about effective and productive business operations that can be completed from anywhere.

One aspect of Anywhere Operations is about remote work, which has been adopted by SMEs worldwide due to the pandemic; however, it is far beyond just remote work because it encompasses value-added experiences by bringing workforce and customers together on the same platform.

The first step to adopting an Anywhere Operations model is to define clear and consistent processes across all areas of the business (Sales, Operations, Customer Service etc).  This clarity of process allows you to identify the most appropriate cloud-based software and systems to automate business activities and share data.

Summary

Anywhere Operations is the future of work. It is the number IT trend for 2021. If you would like to discuss how your business can move to an Anywhere Operations model and adopt software that can support this, please get in touch. We would love to help.

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