When COVID-19 struck in early 2020, the immediate priority for every CEO was to avoid a disruption of services for their customers. To ensure business continuity and employee safety, companies moved to a remote working environment in quick time.

With several countries going into lockdown, remote working was planned for the short term, with employees expecting to return to their workspaces once things went normal. However, as it turned out, work from anywhere (WFX) became the new normal as offices could no longer accommodate the entire workforce while maintaining social distancing norms.

How the pandemic changed business requirements

Business priorities

Disruption to businesses arising from cities/countries going into lockdown needed to be mitigated. As businesses settled into the current new normal, they sought flexible delivery models that allowed employees in critical processes to operate out of offices, while the others worked from remote environments.

This called for a hybrid workforce where employees operated out of a mix of existing offices, co-working spaces, and WFX. It gave companies an option to book office space on demand, allowing them to scale up quickly when a new deal was won and scale down if they lost business.

Employee priorities

In the meantime, employees who moved to Tier 1 cities in search of work returned to their Tier 2/3 locations. This reverse migration revealed that a significant employee base that moved to Tier 1 cities would prefer to work from Tier 2/3 cities, if given an opportunity.

Remote working also allows companies to tap into a larger talent pool. It provides access to a diverse workforce, including women who take post maternity breaks,  and people with disabilities who have better support at home.

Finally, employees working closer to their home location experience an increase in job satisfaction that eventually leads to lower attrition rates and higher productivity.

Future operating model

The above business and employee priorities can be addressed through a Distributed Delivery model. This is a hub and spoke model, where employees supporting the same client process work out of different locations. Since all employees work on the same or similar processes, in case a hub or spoke location shuts down, other locations can pick up the load and ensure business continuity.

Hub:  Includes offices located primarily in Tier 1 cities. These are mainly large centers where multiple clients are serviced.

Spoke: There are three types of spoke locations:

1.     Mini Centre: Office locations in Tier 1 cities with a smaller seating capacity. They service fewer clients and can be within the same city as a hub location, or  on the outskirts.
2.     Micro Centre: These are office locations in Tier 2 or 3 cities to attract local talent. They generally have lower OPEX and resource costs. They also have lower attrition rates.
3.     Work from Anywhere (WFX): This includes work from home as well as co working locations. Employees have mobile devices and infrastructure - such as a work desk and chair - to enable a comfortable work environment.

The Distributed Delivery model is intrinsically a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) by design, as it proactively ensures business continuity. It distributes the risks of operations by spreading a process to multiple locations and empowers operations with mobile devices (laptop) in contrast to the traditional desktop approach.

Target operating model based on the nature of the process

There is no one model that suits all client processes. Hence, we defined a framework that will help identify the most suitable target operating model. (Refer to the figure below.)

Measuring resilience

Measuring business resilience ensures that we benchmark our current resilience score and measure success once we register an improvement. The Business Resilience Score (BRS) metric is a composite score of a process based on three parameters:

1.      People resilience scorecard: Distribution of people in multiple locations / geographies to ensure people availability even in the case of a BCP situation.
2.      Process resilience scorecard: Distribution of processes in multiple locations / geographies to ensure business continuity at a process level.
3.      Technology resilience scorecard: Enabling portable devices with ease of connectivity to ensure business continuity from anywhere.

How to enable the business resilience score

Account profiling

Evaluate client processes on critical parameters like business / legal restrictions, connectivity and security postures (PCI/PHI/PII data applicability) and help decision making for WFO/WFX/Distributed  Delivery.

We evaluated all the processes on 5 factor frameworks which will help in choosing the best delivery model (WFX/WFO/Distributed delivery).

• Reporting layer: Assessment of real time tracking and reporting on the progress of work unit completion. It helps in remote management and raises analytics driven early warning even in a remote environment.
• Technology layer: Assessment of the type of work asset used for production. A portable asset like a laptop enables work from anywhere.
• Network layer: Assessment of the type of connectivity needed to perform work. Work that requires a higher bandwidth, like content moderation of social media, is more suitable for office infra. On the other hand, back office work like master data management, can be done uninterrupted even on a personal broadband connection at home.
• Security layer: Assessment of the type of data on which agents work. Data that is available in the public domain has a lower security risk as compared to data like credit card details.
• Process layer: Assessment of the type of work including upstream and downstream dependencies. It also takes into consideration factors like complexity of work and the need for collaboration.

Currently, a majority of the global workforce continues to work from home due to pandemic. WFX is seen as a convenient model for both companies and their employees, but it comes with data security risks and other challenges. The Distributed Delivery approach allows a secured office environment, better business resilience, and enhanced satisfaction for employees as they stay closer to their hometowns. It is a win-win model for businesses, service providers, as well as employees.

Rajesh Sehgal
Global Head of Quality, Process Excellence, and Transition at Digital Operation & Platform
Wipro

He has been with Wipro for 20 years and has played a leading role in developing strategy for value creation in end-to-end business cycles and customer experience management. He has built practices and frameworks like RPA, smart operations, etc. A certified Master Black Belt and assessor for Business Excellence Model & Standards, Rajesh has represented and received awards and recognition at several national and international forums. His thought leadership papers have been published and shared at forums like NASSCOM, ANQ, etc. Rajesh is a Mechanical Engineer with an MBA in International Business from IIFT, New Delhi.

Gopal Aggarwal 
Associate Vice President – Process Excellence
Wipro

He has two decades of experience in Digital Operations and Business Process Reengineering. During his tenure, Gopal delivered various process transformation initiatives using Lean, Six Sigma, Standardization, and Process Benchmarking, and has received multiple awards. Gopal is a chartered accountant (CA), and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Management. He is a certi­fied Black belt and Six Sigma trainer from Wipro.