News

Dealing with the Coronavirus

Things have changed in the business world, and our communities, due to the global pandemic that none of us could have foreseen. People talk about a “new normal” but we will need to see how the virus plays out over time. The one thing we do know for sure is that in the short term there is an immediate impact to all of us, and how we address that we believe is critical.

Some of the immediate impacts include:

How are Telecom vendors replying?

Work from Home – It is estimated that 50% of all jobs in American can be done remotely. Of those currently 45% offer some limited form of work from home. Many companies provide secure remote VPNs that allow employees to log in and work remote 1 day per week for example. Some companies like First American Business allow all its employees to work remote full time. Teleworking first started in the late 90’s and has expanded every year since.

Due to the Coronavirus, major corporations who never had a policy are now forced to shut their office buildings and quickly set up remote working. Education facilities including grade schools have set up and are conducting remote learning. Teachers around the country are developing lesion plans and teaching over video! Imagine… this was not even contemplated in February of this year.

How are Telecom vendors replying?

Collaboration Tools (voice, video, chat)

Due to the C-19 virus, the major telecom companies are rolling out free or reduced collaboration and work-from-home solutions. Examples:

• Cisco: Free Webex worldwide for 90 days
• Ring Central: Free (limited) UC collaboration
• Avaya: Free Spaces (collaboration) and Contact Center work from home licenses.
• Ribbon (Kandy): Enabling customer’s workforce with Work@home. Free and secure video conferencing and collaboration tools.

Virtually all suppliers in the Telecom space have risen to the challenge and are offering their products and services to companies and governments for free. Now, many of these offers are limited – such as 90 days and have a cap on license volumes but they are there and available now. The telecom industry has jumped into motion to address the collaboration needs of corporate America.

First American Response

• We support our clients 7×24 for complete remote offers.
• First American Business offers cloud-based voice services that we can turn up in days. For example, we now have over 60 end users (4 sites) on our cloud offer today with our customer Hello Destination.
• We handle implementation and on-going support including working with our customer’s existing carriers and suppliers.

100% of our staff has remained in place during this global pandemic. We remotely access our customer’s networks to trouble shoot and resolve issues. We can avoid air travel because we have a nationwide network of over 800 technicians in the field that we can deploy locally if needed.

In short, we are fully operational and supporting our customers every day!