Work from home: How IX runs the game
With the outbreak of Coronavirus in early 2020, remote work has become more normalized and has affected the way we communicate, connect and create. IX Telecom was one of the first adepts of this alternative work style, first to abide by government emergency instructions in the fight against the spread of covid-19, and later because we couldn’t get enough of all the benefits it brings to the table.
Studies have revealed that remote workers are healthier, achieve higher productivity, and enjoy a better work-life balance. However, this working model has been challenging to implement and sustain for many companies as it relies on different pillars to establish and run. In this article, we’ll walk you through our own experience as a global telco company that successfully maintained excellent WFH expertise for two years straight.
IX’s take on Work From Home? A pure bliss
Working from home has been driving a workplace revolution as it packs many benefits for workers and businesses alike.
- Less Commute Stress
According to the Auto Insurance Center, commuters spend approximately 100 hours commuting and 41 hours stuck in traffic each year. Other heavy commuters spend longer commute times, accounting for 90 minutes or more each way. Commuting comes not only at a time cost but a psychological one. It’s a significant source of stress and anxiety resulting from the sense of unpredictability and loss of control. It can lead commuters to experience frustration, social isolation, and an increased risk of depression.
- A better Work-Life Balance
Working from home offers schedule flexibility, enabling workers to organize their days as they wish as long as they stay committed to completing their tasks within the agreed deadlines. Whether it’s spending more time with the family and friends, running errands, taking kids to school, or enjoying leisure time, this empowerment strengthens the sentiment of trust within the company, enables employees to attend to the needs of their personal life, and leads to remarkable outcomes.
- Satisfaction improvement
Studies have proven employees’ inclination to adopt the remote work lifestyle. Let’s just take a moment to realize that 80% consider teleworking a job perk and 67% of people want to work from home, even if it means a pay cut for some. Indeed, a poll of 1500 technology professionals revealed that 37% of them would accept a 10% salary cut to work remotely. Research by CartridgePeople.com published in the SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) Workers Report showed that 60% of workers felt happier when working from home.
- Productivity Increase
A study by Stanford that was held over nine months on 16000 workers revealed that working from home increased productivity by 13%. This improvement is attributed to a more convenient and quieter working environment and an extended shift due to fewer breaks and sick days.
IX key remote work enabler: Structure, structure, and structure.
A Comprehensive working flow: IX ERP System
The main tip to succeeding in the technical work-from-home transition is establishing a solid, secure working system that ensures a steady flow of communication and collaboration within and between departments. Accordingly, IX has set an ERP system to enable many intertwining departments full autonomy and ease in working remotely.
The Sales Department centralizes its operations on CRM and BC systems to enable logging leads and opportunities and provide assistance in the BC and quotation creation processes.
Upon quotation approval, the sales team will create a Project Kickoff Document (PKD). The same information will flow to our Service Delivery (SD) team via the PMO System. After documents are reviewed and approved, the required information will be ready in the PMO System for Service Delivery to manage it. SD will create a Purchase Request (PR) for internal approval on the PMO, and once they obtain the permission, a PO for the vendor to procure the service/equipment will be created.
Once the project has been delivered, SD will generate a Delivery Order (DO) from the system. After they have the signed DO and pass the required document to the customer, SD will create a PDD and hand it over to the Finance and NOC departments.
Through the IX Billing System, finance will get all the related information that has been created from PMO in PDD for invoicing purposes. The IX Billing system will also interact with QuickBooks via an API connection on the accounting part.
On the other hand, NOC will get the required information related to NOC via the Helpdesk System from the PDD. NOC will then use the Helpdesk system to log all customer trouble tickets and use PRTG and Solarwinds for circuit monitoring purposes. All this information will be made available before trouble ticketing and monitoring purposes.
A seamless process from Sales Department to Service Delivery on procurement and handover of the project and continue with invoicing from Finance and handling trouble ticket and connectivity monitoring by NOC through IX ERP Ecosystem.
Unpacking IX’s Work From Home Tools:
- We keep it well organized.
IX relies on Google Suites’ Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive to keep all the materials flowing smoothly. Google Suites is intuitive and ensures an easy workflow, tracking, and in-time collaboration with team members or even people outside the organisation.
- We are always in touch.
One of the significant work-from-home downsides is the lack of human interaction, brilliantly tackled by the latest communication technologies and apps. Our go-to tools are WhatsApp for daily and quick conversations. At the same time, we organise all our catch-up and professional meetings on Google Meet, which can be integrated into Google Calendar for utmost convenience. We make sure to have at least one daily Google meet call in the morning to set the tone for the day.
- In Remote Design, we believe:
We’re a global funky telco company that loves social media and design. We like to involve our entire social media team in the graphic design process, and Canva enables that. It provides a collaborative and uncomplicated use space to unlock creative prowess and ease tweaks here and there.
We work remotely to bring our vision closer.
IX has always been an immense advocate of work-life balance culture through all the initiatives taken in the office-work era: in-house facilities for leisure and rest, flexible working hours, an in-house child caretaker for working parents, regular cultural and sports activities, and company outings and trips. Therefore, exploring it via a remote model and thriving to make it work has been a journey of pride and joy. We’ve had a blast integrating and experimenting with working from home over the past two years, and our takeaway is improved satisfaction, productivity, and creativity of our entire team.