A truly global infectious disease event like COVID-19 can be every bit as transformative for the future as a global war or economic depression.

How lasting the changes originated will depend on the extent of the virus’s spread and its ultimate severity. Neither of which can be known yet. But the longer the outbreak endures, the more likely it is those coping responses will remain with us.

Most businesses in the world still rely on software and computers that are maintained in physical offices and cannot be easily used in any other way.

As government travel restrictions in countries around the world make those offices inaccessible, companies must find ways to keep operations going.

How the impact of major pandemics can be felt in working methods?

Most companies are going remotely if they can and rushing into cloud computing. Remote work and videoconferencing traffic in North America and Asia have doubled since the outbreak began.

Led by tech firms like Twitter and Facebook, companies are encouraging and even requiring their employees to work from home. Both to slow the spread of the disease now and prepare for the worst should offices be closed in a quarantine.

Business leaders will come to see that central offices and face-to-face meetings are less vital than they thought.

Productivity can be tied anywhere rather than putting time in an office, and businesses should be ready to replace in-person meetings with video or telephone conferences and can increase teleworking options.

However, this will affect how companies manage their unified communications.

How companies approach the optimization of remote work?

Today more and more companies will have employees on-the-go and working off-site regularly. In China, the use of Teams in meetings and calls has increased by 500% since January 31, according to Microsoft.

As you know, Microsoft Teams includes chat, video call, cloud document storage space, and collaboration with Office 365.

As these employees will need to access the companies files, Microsoft O365 licenses cost come into play. 

One of the most significant issues with effective management is that most organizations are repeatedly fluctuating. It can be a constant headache trying to accurately and consistently calculate each department’s cost, and charge it back to each business unit in your organization. 

If you add different locations and thousands of users into the mix, then it can become far more complicated to keep track of who is where.

This is when Asignet gives you complete and comprehensive visibility of licensing. You can get a full picture of your license information to accurately and efficiently coordinate IT chargebacks for your organization.

This allows you to identify areas where you can reduce your Skype for Business and O365 licenses costs by assigning a cheaper license to a user without them losing any of the functionality they need.

Enterprises need the insight and visibility into their Skype for Business and O365 licenses costs subscriptions and put them on a level playing field with Microsoft, providing upgrade and downgrade reports, and suggesting the most cost-effective subscription and product combinations for organization’s needs.

The priority is to make it easier for everyone to continue their normal activities and to help curb the effect of the spread of the virus, and with the correct optimization of enterprises’ Unified Communications, it will allow for increased productivity and costs savings when implementing and operating a next-generation communications platform.

Our Unified Communications as a Service along with RPA interacts autonomously with the Skype and network infrastructure, Active Directory, HR systems, Skype for Business and O365 services to provision, operate and control the users and usage of those services without human intervention. 

In the time where crisis rules, it’s important to have a complete overview of your subscriptions, to ensure that you avoid purchasing new subscriptions if you already have unused ones available.

This is an essential tool for your license harvesting and joiners, movers, and leavers processes, giving you control of your license and subscription purchasing as employees enter or exits your organization or change roles.

Investing in resilient remote work infrastructure can soften the economic blow of a pandemic.

Contact us for more information about Cloud and O365 Licenses expense management.