While the world continues to contend with COVID-19, with various countries now taking extreme lockdown measures, there is no doubt that many businesses have to maintain their work-from-home mandates. Critical economic sectors like banking, financial institutions, and digital financing platforms – like fintech services, e-wallets, and micro-funding, are expected to keep the economy running somehow.
Many news reports throughout 2020, have shared how the workforce prefers being in a proper office environment. In contrast, an extensive research study that Singapore-based EngageRocket put out late last year had revealed that 64% of those surveyed confirmed they are more productive at home than when at the office.
Featuring 20,000 respondents across various marketplaces in Singapore, the study also revealed the challenges of this work-from-home arrangement. Beyond discovering unacceptable stress levels for the finance and digital tech sectors, key findings include not having immediate access to resources and tools, poor Internet connectivity, and increased cyber-security risks.
Another report on the pandemic’s impact on the banking sector from Mckinsey & Company – ‘Shaping and Safeguarding the Banking Workforce After COVID-19’ – shared how there must be new and agile ways of working for these critical economic sectors. This mostly revolves around putting in place the latest innovation that ensures business continuity and, at the same time, maintains the high levels of data protection and usage trust that banks and financial institutions are renowned for.
Business-Grade Platform
Of the many concerns that pepper the banking and finance sectors, managing their workforce and caring for their performance delivery and well-being are top priority. One way to ensure there is peace of mind for management and personnel, while also maintaining high work quality, is to properly equip them with the right tech infrastructure.
Besides providing a decent laptop or smartphone, an enterprise-class networking hardware is now a necessity as well. Usually deployed only at headquarters and critical operational zones, this advanced platform not only streamlines the management of communications and selects relevant apps for company personnel, it also uses a comprehensive integrated security system and offers smart routing capabilities.
In this new norm where working-from-home is still mandatory, can the same equipment be deployed to the homes of employees?
Ready for the New Norm
With the Singtel Teleworking Solution, powered by Singtel Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) communications infrastructure, office-quality networks can easily be deployed for seamless work-from-home experience. Using this one-stop, cost-efficient network solution will simplify and optimize the workflow in a team as it puts into place a segregated broadband for professional use in a home environment, while enabling enterprise-class firewall security measures and network prioritisation to ensure optimal resources are reserved for critical business access.
With these capabilities, a secure connection to the office network can be rolled out easily and with zero fuss. Thanks to its plug-and-play design, there is really no need for the IT department to configure the new hardware on-site or for users to contend with a lengthy setup time.
Beyond establishing a seamless work-from-home ecosystem for personnel from the banking and fintech services sectors, they can also easily subscribe and turn on the unified threat management features for advanced cyber-security protection when they work in a virtual networking environment within the confines of their home-based office space. This will ensure there is no disruption in the workflow, whether it is analyzing financial records or having a virtual conversation with a customer/client. With the added use of policy-based network profiles, priority access for super-users, management, or IT administrators, can be managed easily too.
Made for Home-Bound Office Workers
What Singtel offers is well-suited for banking and fintech personnel, especially those who need access to mission-critical data, financial insights, and enhanced collaboration capabilities. From decision-makers to management teams for banks, customer service for e-wallets and digital financing, and even backend management, all can readily access company data assets easily and quickly. This is due to the progressive security and centralized network management controls that the Singtel SD-WAN has in place. Paired with a business-grade broadband connection, software-managed access policies, and smart routing capabilities, the Singtel Teleworking Solution can even optimize internet traffic with home and virtual office data through packet prioritization.
Having these enhanced features – originally made for enterprise networks – will ensure teleworkers and those on permanent work-from-home arrangement get a safe, secure, and hassle-free connectivity experience while they are virtually accessing their office. In fact, these advanced capabilities will also ensure full compliance and governance with user data management and privacy regulations.
With work-from-home arrangements now being a long-term consideration and understanding the importance of business continuity, banks and financial sector players in Singapore have made the flexible working arrangements permanent. As the world moves into the new norm in the year 2021, these sectors must continue to remain agile and even consider new tech – such as the Singtel Teleworking Solution – as critical.
For those who want more information about the Singtel SD-WAN or Teleworking solution for home networks can write to g-segmentdata@singtel.com or head over to the Singtel website.
