The Challenge: The 2nd wave of the pandemic took more than just our health. My mother succumbed to COVID and it was a difficult period for me. During this period, our Microsoft server crashed. End users were unable to access the Microsoft domain server and every minute of delay meant that our business would not function. It was a struggle to bring back the systems.
Story:
My name is Ganesh Joshi, and I work with Nilon’s. I live with my wife and two kids roughly 200 meters from the Nilons office in Pune. Considering Nilons comes under essential commodities, there was a huge challenge to keep the IT setup running 24 x7 x 365 – with just a 4-member team for 600 field agents.
Treat your office as your home, and your company as your own.
I work with a relatively young team. Dinesh, Sagar, and Walmik all have families with kids still in school. When the first lockdown was announced, it was very challenging to keep things moving continuously as factories are in the remote areas.
My journey through the pandemic has been a challenging experience with one work disaster after another keeping us busy. Our first disaster was when our Microsoft server crashed. This is not a common occurrence and we were left scrambling for solutions. End users were unable to access the Microsoft domain server and every minute of delay meant that our business would not function. It was a struggle to bring back the systems, my team and I spent 48 hours at the office ensuring the business would continue at any cost.
My second challenge was to ensure the safety of our field agents. We helped our sales team by implementing a mobile application – 1st time for our organization. Within 3 weeks of the lockdown, my team and I worked tirelessly to deploy the system and train our agents pan India.
But our greatest challenge was to work through personal losses. The 2nd wave of the pandemic took more than just our health. Several of us, including me, were affected by COVID. My mother succumbed to COVID and it was a difficult period for me. My teammate, Dinesh, lost his father due to old age. It was an emotional time for us all and we as a team stood together, taking over each other’s workloads, and providing the strength and support to carry on.
IT is a driver for business. Don’t side-line us.
I can proudly say that I wouldn’t have been able to achieve any of this without mentioning my hardworking team. Despite our hurdles, the team has gone above and beyond their duties to be there for one another and work together as a family.
With proper planning and coordination, our team not only kept the systems running 24/7, we also implemented and successfully deployed 2 new projects. Our achievements include:
- Handled Microsoft Server disaster effectively with absolutely zero downtime and supported 900 Users.
- Implemented Reporting Channel across Work from Home users #Slack
- Deployed Field Assist Sales Force Automation PAN India (600 sales team Users)
- Released Cargo Exchange Logistic and Supply Chain automation Mobile app.