When the roof collapsed on the Mediswitch call centre recently, the company was able to keep the business working by using cloud computing.
Debbie Marais, group CIO of Altron told the Microsoft Tech Summit this morning that Office 365, Yammer and the business portal allowed the company to get the call centre back up and running within eight hours, with workers operating from their homes.
“When the Mediswitch roof collapsed, the call centre and a number of the offices were demolished,” she says. “It left us without a network or communications.”
Cloud technologies allowed management to start using Yammer to communicate with employees, sending them home, keeping them updated on developments and even sharing hospital reports on employees who were hurt in the incident.
Fortunately, no-one was seriously hurt in the accident.
“People were able to work from home using the business portal,” Marais adds. “As a result we lost no business hours, and the call centre was up and running in eight hours, with employees working from their homes.”
Using Office 365 and Yammer to enable communication and operations not only allowed the business to run without any interruptions for customers, but it helped to build team spirit and camaraderie as well, Marais says.
