The Gregorian year 2020 started dramatically. Australia was on fire, the US was sizing up against Iran, and a new communicable disease was raising concerns in China. As fires were extinguished and tensions de-escalated, the coronavirus was gaining ground. By the end of February, confirmed cases had risen to 85,968 globally. In Europe, Italy went into lockdown on 9 March. Germany and France followed suit the next week. After a period of blustering messages, the UK went into full scale lockdown on 23 March. The effect on our lifestyle has been considerable. Online activity shot up, traffic levels plummeted, and Kashmiri goats reclaimed Llandudno.

When it comes to business communications, diversity and flexibility are the major trends shaping the way we work. Contract and remote work is increasingly common, offering enterprises the agility to be responsive as well as strategic in order to maintain an edge in the marketplace. Over 90% of UK enterprises currently employ contractors, with that figure set to increase over the coming years.

The world has changed. For many small businesses, achieving a physical presence to match their digital presence is a challenge. Employees working in satellite locations or on the road can help a business cover more ground, but separation can lead to disconnection from the rest of the company. By the end of 2019, over three quarters of small business employees worked remotely for more than two days per week, and 22% of small businesses had over half their staff working remotely. Businesses reported expecting those figures to increase over the next two years. Remote working trends are creating a more disparate, even fragmented, workforce, bringing new challenges for businesses to address in order to remain competitive through the evolution of the digital age. Business communication is evolving to meet these challenges.

Much speculation has emerged around “the new normal” and what businesses should be preparing for. PwC’s CEO Panel Survey reports 86% of UK CEOs believe the shift towards remote working will live on. That means businesses should be looking to engage and enable their remote workforces over the long term. With 59% of UK CEOs making the digital transformation of their core business operations a top priority, employees are set to reap the benefits of a more flexible, more well-being focused, and more mobile working environment than ever before.

By now, we’ve exhausted every cliché in the book. Life has changed, work has changed, and things simply aren’t going back to the way they were. Adapting to these changes isn’t easy, and there are plenty of challenges to face. That also means it’s a chance to do things differently, to do things better.

The year 2020 should be a watershed moment. A wake-up call. We no longer need to be physically present to be productively present. Even in areas where presence is really important. In this eBook, we aim to review instances where traditional presence has been substituted with virtual presence. This includes examples in which public service agencies in the UK have transformed their delivery models against a backdrop of a global pandemic, followed by cost cutting to survive the economic impacts of COVID-19. Has it made a difference? Read on to find out.

Remote working is now a mandatory part of any business continuity plan. Around the world, the way we work has changed, in some ways probably forever. But the transition isn’t without precedent. In the UK, the number of remote workers increased by 25% in the decade from 2008 to 2018. That rate was mirrored in mainland Europe. Remote work is no longer a concept reserved for the lucky few. The rise of cloud technology and software as a service means that any company can expand into the realm of building a remote workforce, with very little initial investment.

In late 2019, Sunny Dhami, Director of Product Marketing for RingCentral UK, joined a group of veteran technologists to talk technology, the future of work and the role of the CIO. The conversation was chaired by CIO Watercooler’s David Savage.

While digital capability opens opportunities in our personal lives, the experience shapes our expectations in our professional lives. As consumers, we use an average of seven different channels to communicate with brands, and we expect brands to be present on our channel of choice. As employees, we expect to collaborate from anywhere, to replicate the same instant connection with our colleagues as we do with our friends.

Transform how you manage customer engagements In today’s competitive business environment, it’s more critical than ever to stay in tune with the service needs of your customers. RingCentral Contact Centre helps your organisation do just that, allowing you to: • Connect with customers on any channel. • Boost agent performance with integrated team messaging. • Solve complex customer issues quickly with one-click access to experts. • Monitor service levels in real time with intelligent bots.

How to streamline your communications and make your job far easier.

Cavell Group launched its Enterprise Insight Report in Q4 2019, surveying 1,800 businesses across Europe and the US, with 300 businesses from the UK taking part. All the respondents were the decision-makers on their telecoms solution or those who managed the solution with CIOs and CEOs from a range of different company sizes and industries to give an in-depth picture of what is happening in the UK telecoms market.

COVID-19 brought upheaval and disruption across the country, but also acted as a catalyst to enabling flexible and remote working in the private and public sector alike. There is a new appreciation for digital technology and its ability to enable communication across teams, wherever they’re working from.

In the past decade, we’ve seen a shift in the way businesses approach gender inequality. Gender pay gap data exposes the factors that lead to women earning less than men, which spans all markets and all industries. Closing the gap will take time, and progress will not be linear.

An interactive multimedia webpage based on interviews, market analysis and customer stories around managing contact centres through significant change. This was created as a mid-funnel piece supporting a lead generation campaign for RingCentral Contact Centre.

Business leaders and workers alike continue to question the future of the physical office. As organisations decide which working model they want to adopt in a post-pandemic world, many employees anxiously await clarity. Will they return to the office or adopt remote or hybrid working as the ‘new normal’?

EasyToBook wanted to position itself as an exciting, dynamic and fun place to work. I managed the creation of this infographic showing the demographics of the Easytobook workforce.

A web page foregrounding the benefits for game developers of hosting their games on Spil portals.

Yesterday at RIPE 76 in Marseille, the Rob Blokzijl Foundation presented the first Rob Blokzijl award to Wilfried Woeber "For more than thirty years of contributions to the development of the Internet: building and interconnecting networks, sharing knowledge, connecting people, building consensus and helping others to contribute and succeed." The Rob Blokzijl Award honours the memory of Rob Blokzijl, the first Chairman of RIPE.

Blockchain and machine learning are arguably the two most talked about technologies of the past decade. Their potential to transform business models across a variety of industries has led to huge investment in their development, and significant advances have been made in both their capabilities and adoption as a result.

A web page foregrounding the benefits of publishing Spil's games on other platforms.

A web page foregrounding the benefits for game developers of hosting their games on Spil portals.