Being a VAD for data, network and application protection and management, iValue has the right IT infrastructure and tools for secure and seamless collaboration with internal as well as external stakeholders. Krishna Raj Sharma, Director & CEO, iValue InfoSolutions highlights the company’s approach to ensure 24×7 service and support to the customers
How are you safeguarding your customers’ assets/premises in order to ensure continuity of their business operations?
As the world grinds to a halt following the dispersion of COVID-19 and businesses around the world amidst a significant downturn, enterprises are turning towards their Business Continuity Plan (BCP) to reduce the potential impact of this worldwide emergency on business sustainability. However, one of the prime aspects of BCP is that they affect the full scale of collateral issues that may arise from such an emergency.
From the technology perspective, BCP needs to consider access. This issue is twofold – having access to premises in which businesses operate to correct system defects and system outages, as well as access to external premises that provide technology services such as data storage or data security services.
At iValue, we have the right solution fit making remote working as seamless as possible, right from secure access to data, network, and application – the DNA of every business, apart from providing the highest level of support to our customers and partners.
With the sudden rise in cyber threats and attacks during this period, how are you ensuring your customers’ data is safe and helping them mitigate risks?
Today cybersecurity is facing many obstacles including the lack of skilled people and too many security technologies to manage. These challenges force organisations to take a reactive mindset when it comes to cybersecurity. A few of the critical cyber threats include threat to medical devices, email malware phishing campaigns and email frauds, VPN and cloud-based vulnerabilities, and threats to communication and video conferencing tools.
We are constantly in touch with our customers and partners and suggesting them to adopt IT architecture built around a hybrid cloud model, which enables all the core applications to be accessed securely from anywhere and on any device. This includes ERP, CRM, HRMS, and Messaging/collaboration tools. We are also suggesting our customers to have in place endpoint security, VPN access for applications like ERP, strong multi-factor authentication for CRM/HRMS, and messaging platform along with DLP and IRM solutions.
During this time of total lockdown, how are you ensuring 24×7 service and support to your customers?
Our ERP, CRM, HRMS and messaging / collaboration tools are available on hybrid cloud model which ensures secure access from within and outside the office. With this approach, we ensure and deliver our services to customers as well as partners and OEM’s with least disruptions. Being a VAD for data, network and application protection and management, we have the right IT infrastructure and tools for secure and seamless collaboration with internal as well as external stakeholders.
Besides, our digital sales team continue to leverage social media and email engines for constant engagement with our customer and partner teams and update them on the relevant offerings to enable WFH in a secure and scalable way meeting enterprise workloads.
We have also added AI-driven chatbot to our website to ensure right teams are alerted on the queries/challenges expressed by the visitors. This ensures the relevant team is getting in touch with the customers in less than half an hour during business hours and within 2 hours during non-business hours.
Highlight some of the challenges being faced in providing service or support to the customers during this period?
We are not facing any challenge with respect to technology or making our employees WFH, as they are able to operate like working from the office. However, on the business front, we are unable to get hardware products for DNA protection and management from both overseas and domestic OEM’s due to transportation restrictions.
Besides, we request the government to consider IT products, which enable WFH and provide security for application, data and network offerings, as essential service so that we can empower more business to ensure they continue to operate and carry out their businesses despite the constraints. This will also ensure we achieve multiple objectives of practicing social distance, work from home, continue to operate and serve respective customers, provide livelihood and save jobs and also prevent cyber-crime which is trying to cash-in on the opportunity to hack unsecure WFH access.
We should enable businesses and individuals to safely do their banking and tax payments in addition to accessing corporate applications and network from their home which are critical in such times. This will ensure we fight the virus without any compromise to government guidelines and also minimize the impact to economy and business loss due to the lockdown.
What’s your message to customers so that they are assured of full support today and in the days to come?
As answered in one of the earlier questions, we are in constant touch with our customers through call-outs, email campaigns, and even social media. We also have AI-driven chat-bot integrated with our website for swift response to the customers and partners. Besides, we are also conducting numerous webinar sessions for our customers and partners educating and keeping them abreast with the latest technologies relevant / required during remote or work from home conditions.
