Coronavirus and remote work how extended teams can keep your business running

As the world grapples with the Coronavirus crisis (COVID-19), businesses are struggling to conduct work as usual.

The Coronavirus crisis has resulted in the largest remote working exercise in history, with organizations like Twitter, Apple, Google, and Sony shifting to remote options. In the face of adversity, businesses now more than ever before are accepting “remote working” as a real option going forward.

Based on our experience in building remote software development teams, we highlight some of the ways in which remote teams could impact business resilience. We also provide some concrete measures on how to manage your remote workforce to help you keep your business afloat in these times of uncertainty.

1. A Remote-First Culture That Supports Business Continuity

Being “Remote-first” is about transforming your business model in ways that your remote software development team can be operationally synchronized to achieving your business goals just as your in-house team.

In short, it means that remote employees are not an afterthought. Processes are built from the ground up with the assumption that not everyone is face-to-face and not even within the same time zone.

Hence during disruption, being remote-first can help your business avoid a total shutdown by relying on your remote team to perform critical business functions.

2. Enhance Productivity and Minimize Downtime During Crisis

Being remote-first means that teams are comfortable working with little face time and are better prepared during tough times. The extra flexibility that comes with working remotely allows employees to schedule their work better resulting in more productivity. This way, COVID-19’s impact does not have to restrict your business’ output.

During downtime, engineers can work on completing backlogs of the development roadmap or create new features and test others, in a way that the standard 9-to-5 job does not.

3. Benefit From Predictable and Lower Operational Costs

For most businesses, the Coronavirus crisis will lead to a significant decrease in revenue. They will be forced to critically assess their operations to determine whether costs can be curtailed. This is when operating remotely can help. Here are some examples of how companies can benefit from a better cost/value ratio:

Access a wider tech talent pool with potentially lower costs of hiring compared to the local market. This makes you less dependent on rescue measures taken by local governments to prevent large scale lay-offs. The lower talent acquisition and operational costs allow you to continue your business during times of disruption.

Predictable costs, such as flat administrative fees, that provide businesses with the ease to plan out their financials during a crisis.

4. Focus on Your Core Business During Crisis

At times of crisis, you want to focus on your core business, while your remote team can help mitigate day-to-day operations. We all understand that time is critical during a crisis and using it on non-essential work brings unnecessary risk to your business.

The right remote service providers can take care of all IT equipment and administrative arrangements, such as payroll, travel arrangements and managing leave. This allows you to focus on the business essentials, such as bringing a COVID-19 ready product to market.

5. Flexibility and Readiness to Reconfigure & Scale

We are not sure what a post-COVID-19 world could hold, but for sure it will not be business as we know it now. It is likely that the recovery will force businesses to reconfigure their ecosystems such as team structure, technology and talent. One thing that we are sure of, is that businesses will take the potential threat of a similar situation into account in the future.

Having a remote team provides businesses with the flexibility to access global talent from distributed locations to prepare to scale.

Gapstars has developed a successful model for European tech scale-ups to set up remote development teams in Sri Lanka. A highly anticipated solution for top tech companies located in the Netherlands, where the war for talent is intense.

Gapstars is quickly gaining traction as a key talent and technology supplier for top tech companies in the Netherlands. We currently have 100+ engineers including full-stack developers, UX engineers, and software testers.

Interested in our services or do you need help in setting up your remote team? Contact us.