The whole world is struggling with the coronavirus pandemic. For us and many other companies alike it is an enormous challenge, that emerges from the new reality. As a team, we’ve survived many a crisis, and we have always quickly adapted to the new circumstances, so we treated that as another problem that requires an urgent solution.
In our company we’ve used the remote work before, when it was required for the projects we’ve implemented in various parts of the world. However, we’ve never worked remotely in full time, without an actual office. At first it was an unusual challenge for us. Even so, it turned out that the solutions are simpler than we expected – the tools we’ve already been using enabled us to switch to this mode at once, without reducing the comfort of work.
Project Management
The main goal of a company operating in the new technologies area is to ensure efficient implementation of complex projects. We’ve been using the Teamwork Project Management System almost from the time since the company was founded. This system enables project management and supervision of work. Thanks to Teamwork, we can implement projects efficiently, and present the results of our work to our clients on an ongoing basis. The possibility of efficient communication with the client through the project management system works especially well in the current situation.
Communication
A modern, large office facilitates an efficient flow of information. However, very often in daily communication, even more efficient circulation of information is provided by chats. In our company, we’ve implemented the Teamwork Chat messenger, which is a tool integrated with the Teamwork Project Management System. Until now, Teamwork Chat aided in everyday communication, both between the employees working in the office and those who were working remotely. Now it has become the basic channel for efficient and quick exchange of information.
The widespread usage of videoconferencing is a novelty for us, as well as for many other companies. Quoting The Economist, “Never have so many ceilings been broadcast to so many for so long.” This is a very interesting observation, and very true. In our company, for “broadcasting ceilings” we use the fairly new product, Microsoft Teams. Typically for all the Microsoft products, Teams works seamlessly, and we can rely on it.
Documents workflow
We’ve been testing two document workflow solutions even before the pandemic. These were: the Google cloud, and the Microsoft cloud. Basing on our experience with them, we’ve decided to implement the Office 365 suite in our company. It’s very important to us to create documents of high quality, and the Microsoft suite offers many more advantages than other tools, having practically no competition in other tools. Dedicated Microsoft OneDrive service provides us with a space to efficiently share documents with each other, and with our clients. It also allows for seamless collaboration of multiple users on the same document file, be it in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, as well as files created in tools outside of Microsoft environment.
Implementations
We implement a lot of projects for our clients, and out process is highly automated, which allows us to do most of the tasks remotely or using shipping companies. Currently, we’re also implementing several large videomapping projects, including one that will use thirty-six projectors at once. In this case we also try to automate the work as much as possible, and we’re creating tools that will optimise the implementation time. Even so, the physical presence at the implementation site is still necessary for the proper configuration of the projection.
Observations
New procedures in our company have been in force for three weeks now. As a result, we already have first insights involving solutions that can improve our workflow. The main concerns revolved around the efficiency of working at home. It is known that the office space is specially designed to create the best conditions for work, and at home it is not always possible. Despite this, the work efficiency in our company remained at the same level, and, in some cases, significantly increased. As you can see, working remotely in the creative industry can be beneficial, and we will certainly use it in the future. At present, fully remote work is still impossible, due to the need of visiting the office to e.g. sign various documents. Unfortunately, not everyone has yet grasped the idea, that we’re living in the 21st century…
RADOSŁAW ZDUNEK
President of the Board