Business Chief Europe Magazine February 2021 | Page 308

ARQIVA

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While Arqiva was impacted by COVID- 19 , like most organisations worldwide , the existing digitalisation efforts provided a great deal of resiliency . “ We ’ d previously built that momentum around business change , which was somewhat fortuitous in terms of timing . On Friday the 13th of March we flipped the entire workforce - minus a small number of critical operations and field teams that needed to be on site and in the field - to working from home overnight , with minimal interruptions to service operations .” White emphasises that the pandemic has not impacted the scope of the company ’ s transformation plans , but rather the timeframe , with an extension of around three months to ease the introduction of new technologies and pace of change during lockdown .

Having spun up remote working so quickly , White believes that the technology has more than proved itself . “ For too many years , the fear of remote working revolved around the perception that the technology would not work reliably at scale and that managing a remote workforce would be too challenging . But that was wrong on both counts .” Notwithstanding individual and personal circumstance challenges , such as those

— Clive White , CTO , Arqiva

FEBRUARY 2021