The Record - Issue 21: Summer 2021

66 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om T his month, we are bidding farewell to our traditional office space. Like many companies, we leaned into Covid-19 by innovating with our partners at Microsoft and leveraging Teams, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Guides and soon Mesh. During this time, we have found that employees and clients can be productive working from home, including by facilitating demos, virtual workshops and devel- opment reviews from home offices, garages and even in the field. We helped clients with countermeasures to Covid-19 travel restrictions that continue to create opportunities to reduce travel time and expense and we pushed out guided skills train- ing when it was not safe to gather in the training centre with an instructor. Some of this was a compromise but much of it turned out to be better, more effective and less expensive than previous methods. Now it is time to harvest what we have learned and turn what has been a tragic experience into a better future. Continue working at home Our instructional designers and program- mers will continue writing, designing and programming at home where they are more productive – adding in-person collaboration when needed. Transform common space While we are not returning to the office, we can still benefit from working together with clients in the same physical or virtual space. We have invested in a hybrid digital facility that will con- tinue to virtually serve our global customer base while also serving in-person workshops and pro- duction. It includes a digitally equipped confer- ence room, large digital demo/learning lab and a studio large enough to accommodate half a dozen vehicles. The famous Tustin Blimp Hangar #2 is also located close by, where it provides 237,000 square feet for massive virtual events. Leverage the hybrid Our need to transition to virtual delivery of services and collaboration opened global mar- ket opportunities for CraneMorley. We have become very good at delivering instruction and developing projects with clients in Ireland, Germany, Vietnam and the USA via virtual ses- sions. However, it has also been great to return to in-person collaboration. What is truly exciting for the CraneMorley team is the opportunity to “eat our own digital dog food”. We respect that most of our clients will go through a similar journey in the rest of 2021 and together we will forge a better path. Thomas Pratt is president at CraneMorley Leaning into ‘the new normal’ As we all adjust to a new way of working, it’s important that businesses implement what they have learned during the Covid-19 crisis to ensure operational success after the pandemic THOMA S P RAT T : C RANEMOR L E Y V I EWPO I NT “It is time to harvest what we have learned and turn what has been a tragic experience into a better future”