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Capitalizing On Cost Savings: Remote Working and the Helpdesk By Sumit De S taggeringly but unsurprisingly, 94 percent of organizations reported changes to the day-to- day operations of their business throughout 2020. This is likely because of the significant shift to remote working, which six in 10 businesses say saves them money. But remote-based work environments are not pos- sible without assistance from the helpdesk. We’re going so far as to label the helpdesk as the organiza- tional hero of 2020-21. These professionals facilitated countless smooth transitions to remote work, saving tens of thousands of businesses in the process – pro- viding the hardware to do so, the connection to the network when away from the office, and valuable sup- port when hardware and software issues hampered us. In which case, it seems like the right time for the help- desk to set forth new organizational innovation by capital- izing on the cost savings they drove in the last 18 months. How did the helpdesk become the heroes? In what was quite an intense and chaotic period, the help- desk were the main drivers behind the two aspects that helped organizations to successfully pivot: agility and communication. When it comes to agility, we don’t mean just working in an agile way with sprints and retrospectives; we’re talking about a total shift in mentality. Organizations required solutions to their problems overnight; in fact, they needed them yesterday. So, we couldn’t spend time following the traditional change methodology of assess- ments, fixed processes and rigid step-by-step timelines. Typically, the IT team is already the one embracing agility in businesses. They utilize such mindsets for development, for example. So, when organizations most needed agility, they were there to ask the right questions and provide the right solutions. What are the essentials to get up and running? What does our minimal viable product look like? What are the must- haves in every solution? What are we trying to solve? Do we have remote access to the networks? Can our teams communicate and collaborate? Focusing on the last question, IT became the en- ablers of communication and collaboration. Organiza- tional ecosystems were likely set up for office work- ing, with perhaps a minority remotely accessing the network. Flip that to the majority remote and minority office-based and the ecosystem becomes unsuitable – CONTROL 34 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com