“We’ve already seen the light”: F12.net on rapid move towards work-from-home

Devon Gillard, chief marketing officer at F12.net

For Alberta-based F12.net, much of the corporate culture has always been about getting its people together on both a business and social level.

But when it saw the move towards physical distancing and the need for everyone who can work from home to do so, the solution provider turned on a dime and in just more than one day, changed how it manages its business and how its people worked, fortunately ahead of a similar move by many of its customers.

“It was a massive effort, it was a lot of fun, and I wouldn’t have to do it again,” said CMO Devon Gillard of F12’s rapid transformation.

And as a result, it is has seen jumps in employee productivity and customer satisfaction, even as it reported its busiest support period over as many of its customers made the same translation.

So it’s safe to assume when things go back to the new normal at the end of this, that new normal will include a lot more F12 team members working from home.

In this edition of the ChannelBuzz.ca Podcast, we talk to Gillard about F12’s experience in the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We talk about:

Gillard’s own experience through the early days of the pandemic, including what may have been a mild exposure to the novel coronavirus;
how F12 changed to a work-from-home model in the days before its customers started asking them for help in doing the same, and the lessons learned along the way;
how its customers are doing: who’s struggling, who’s thriving, and who’s seeing short-term pain in exchange for the opportunity for long-term gain;
the flexibility the solution provider is seeing from its vendor partners; and
why Gillard feels this pandemic may be the ultimate long-term validation of the managed services model