What a change a month can make. The coronavirus has changed, at least temporarily, how many companies do business. For many years, Innovia has had a mix of on-site and remote work, but we have seen the amount of remote work grow noticeably over the last few years. For Innovia, this focus on remote work is normal. We have been using the tools that enable it for many years.

Our use of Skype for Business and now Microsoft Teams has greatly improved our productivity both internally and with our customers. Teams provides a multitude of ways to organize meetings, share resources, and do remote work. The ability to save files and links to a group, retain the previous conversations, and easily record meetings all help with day-to-day business operations.

Video conferencing, once a complicated and hardware-intensive investment, is now built into Teams, and most computers have cameras built in to use it. Getting started is as easy as selecting a menu option. Innovia continues to expand its use of video conferencing, and we recommend that our customers start experimenting with it.

Check your Office 365 applications. Chances are you already own Teams and can be using it today! If not, our customers can get started at no cost with a 6-month trial. You can find out the details in this blog post from Jeff Pergolski or by registering for Jeff’s upcoming webinar.

Planning a move to the subscription and web-based Business Central SaaS can help an organization provide an easy path toward remote work. In older versions of NAV, providing remote access for office workers to NAV could be cumbersome and resource-intensive. With hosted NAV and Business Central, those complications go away. Take the opportunity during this situation and think about the benefits of easy remote work.

Throughout our history, major events have brought changes to how we do our daily work and how we live our lives. It remains to be seen how long-term the impacts of the coronavirus will be, but we can certainly feel the upheaval today. We here at Innovia are confident the US will weather the storm and are heartened at the countless examples of people helping one another and doing small or large acts of kindness. Join with us in taking this opportunity to help others and to review how you do business so we can adapt to meet our new reality. Above all be safe.

Best Regards,

Alan Wyne, CEO