How Avid Will Help Your Business Respond to COVID-19 Disruption

By David Scott, Managing Member at Avid Communications.

I imagine your business has been developing plans to handle disruptions possible due to the COVID-19 (“Coronavirus”) threat.

We have. Our internal plans are in place.

Among measures to reduce the chance of virus spread in our office, we are also prepared to offer anyone the ability to work from home if they have the slightest concern they might be ill. We are also ready to operate almost entirely remotely in the case anything like a lock down might be required here in Kansas City.

We are working with our clients as they develop their plans, for we can play a significant role. 

There are four key areas where we can help:

• Implementing telecommuting (work from home).
• Providing easy-to-use video and audio conferencing that can support large numbers of attendees.
• Providing changes to a company’s phone call routing to adapt to emergency situations.
• Forwarding phones.

Telecommuting

The two essential elements of telecommuting are: phones and computers. Most of Avid’s IP phones and all of our Accession users are already configured for remote use, meaning phones can be unplugged at the office and plugged in at home, and they will work as if they were in the office. 

Computers need secure remote access to the company network, and that is accomplished through VPN (virtual private network) service, something many of our customers already use on a regular basis. Our next-generation firewall service allows reliable and safe remote access that is a key component of any contingency plans.

Conferencing

We’ve provided conferencing bridges for many years that do a great job of supporting needs for an audio conference. For smaller meetings, it’s very easy to set up and manage the meeting. For larger meetings, we give the moderator a robust web browser control window to make sure the meeting is secure, control audio levels to keep the quality high, and record the meeting.

We also offer Accession Meeting, a powerful video conferencing service similar to that provided by Zoom. Those using our Accession softphones (either desktop-based or mobile-phone based) will find that Accession Meeting is fully integrated–launch a video conference directly from a phone call. 

Both of these tools can be crucial in keeping a business operating during a crisis.

Call Routing Changes

Avid designs and manages complex call flows for its clients. Under normal circumstances, we have regular requests to modify the call flow for holiday periods, all-company meetings or any number of reasons. As such, we can quickly modify the call flow during emergency circumstances. There might be the need for a business’ main number to ring a different set of phones, or even a cell phone, during an emergency. 

Forwarding Phones

For many businesses, all that might be needed is for individuals to be able to control the forwarding of their phones. This is easy to do via our CommPortal web browser. Since many people will not have used this on a regular basis, the first step might be getting their password to login. Avid can reset passwords, and for larger organizations, Avid can train an administrator with the company to also do password resets.

We Are Here to Help

We know that COVID-19 is probably disrupting your business. And we want you to know that we are here to help you weather this storm through the effective use of your technology.

Please download our COVID-19 White Paper: Mitigating Coronavirus Disruptions (PDF) for more information.