In the 21st Century, it is banal—but still true—that the only constant is change. The last few weeks, or months in some cases, have thrust more change (of the negative variety) than we collectively were anticipating.
Netwoven would like to express empathy for all of us affected by the current COVID-19 crisis, especially those who have lost loved ones or seen family and friends fall ill. We are very grateful that to date our team has stayed healthy and is continuing to support our customers around the globe.
We’d like to reassure all of our stakeholders—employees, customers, partners, and community members—that Netwoven is strictly complying with all local, state, national, and WHO guidelines as an organization and as individuals.
The Future Interrupted?
The growth of the global economy over the past ten years or more—following the overall trends in modern history–has been exhilarating, enabling people across the globe more opportunity to participate in that economy and reap the rewards of doing so.
This growth has been driven by several factors, including the technological tools driving what is now termed Digital Transformation.
As we’ve seen recently with COVID-19, there are risks associated with modern life in global society, and threats that would once be contained in some pocket of the world now pose a greater threat of being unleashed upon all global citizens.
Fear and anxiety are understandable, and so are responses of our institutions, organizations, and individuals.
Despite the current challenges, Netwoven maintains a positive outlook and faith in human drive and ingenuity to come out on top after our temporary setback as a global society. We’re still in a great position to keep building the future.
A New Normal?
Netwoven is a global enterprise with substantial operations in both the United States and India. Our US operations have been largely remote since our founding in 2001 and have developed remote working as a core skillset; however, our Indian workforce regularly collaborates in person at our offices in Kolkata and Bangalore, requiring some adjustments for our dedicated staff there.
While adoption of remote productivity and collaboration technologies continues to sharply increase, many of our customers and partners and those in the larger communities we share have been used to a greater degree of in-person collaboration at physical offices.
In the world of COVID-19 and other possible man-made or natural disasters, these patterns have now changed drastically over the last weeks and are likely to change some aspects of our working life for the foreseeable future.
Today’s Challenges
Adjustments have not been easy for everyone. Many households must adjust to temporary school closures and attendant childcare issues, adjustment of travel plans, disruption of professional, family, and worship activities, etc.
Critical workers in healthcare, public safety, sanitation and more remain at their posts to keep protecting the welfare of our global citizens.
Workers in other roles and industries are just as essential to ensure our powerful global economy remains strong during this temporary disruption; industries need to keep producing physical goods and intellectual services to ensure the financial health of all individuals, organizations, and institutions when the most recent challenge has been defeated.
Netwoven’s—and Humanity’s—Response
Netwoven has embraced technologies of the Microsoft Cloud such as Office 365, Teams, SharePoint, Dynamics 365, and Azure, and has helped our customers in the Fortune 500/1000 and smaller organizations do the same.
These are components of what the industry and press have termed the Digital Transformation. We have seen demand for these and similar technologies spike exponentially recently, with no abatement in sight.
Nothing can replace raw human talent and creativity, but we should consider ourselves lucky to live in an age of Digital Transformation where not even the most daunting challenges can hold humanity back for long. These technologies can enable and enhance us to do our best work, including in the face of adversity, themselves leveraging another of humanity’s marvels, the global telecommunications network and the Internet.
The same Digital Transformation technologies that have made Netwoven and our customers more efficient, more responsive to our customers, and more agile are now helping us keep our employees, customers, partners, and communities safer.
All of us in the global business community can take the opportunity now presented to cut costs, scale back, eliminate jobs, and diminish a collective vision for what life can be like as we progress into the future. Or we can instead take the opportunity to start reinventing our businesses, organizations, and institutions through Digital Transformation to make them more resilient to shocks such as COVID-19 and whatever follow-on challenges are thrown at humanity.
Decisions we collectively make now can not only make our employees, colleagues, customers, friends, and families safer in the short term, but also can make them safer, more secure, more creative, more collaborative, and more ENABLED, for the long-term.
The Future—Starting Today
We don’t want to diminish the very real challenges facing the globe—and every individual—this very day. But we at Netwoven have seen and continue to see every day the determination of our employees, customers, and partners to make our businesses and our lives a little bit better.
The human spirit, combined with the ingenuity of tools of Digital Transformation we’ve created, will ensure this continues to happen, no matter the news today or tomorrow. We trust the news will be better next week, and if not, the week after that, at the very least. Then we can move ahead and keep building the future together.
In closing:
Stay healthy. Keep your friends, family, and communities safe.
And please—reach out to me and any of my colleagues at Netwoven to discuss how we can keep building the future together. Starting today.
Sincerely,
Niraj Tenany,
CEO, Netwoven, Inc.
