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TheWFH Buyer’s Guide By Martin Vilaboy Products and services for the new normal P redicting business communi- cations and IT decision-mak- ing is always a challenge. After all, there are always unseen or underestimated events and circumstances. Things are even fuzzier when the actual business buyers and planners themselves can’t be certain how things will look in six months, a year, or even next quarter. Still, barring any extreme shifts or developments as we navigate a pandemic, it’s a good bet that a healthy percentage of workers who shifted during mandates to work from home (WFH) still will be working from home whether or not we return to a semblance of normal. Certainly, WFH is set to account for an inordinate number of work activity in the very near term. It’s not hard to see things continuing as they have the last several months, in terms of virus spread, vaccines and politics, so a return to the familiar office environment could be slow coming. And if lots of K-12 schools continue with virtual classes, many parents will need to continue tele- commuting in the near term. If more normal conditions are closer or more realistic than we think, the companies that did WFH correctly – those that enabled effective commu- nications and collaboration – will have been forced to see how technology truly can bridge a geographic divide, and how tech-enabled WFH can po- tentially save them lots of money. Back in March, when the exodus of the office began, about a third of busi- nesses surveyed by 451 Research said they expected their expanded WFH policies to stick around long- term or permanently. When 451 asked them again in June, a few months into the experiments, two-thirds said WFH policies would stick around. That would seem to suggest either early tri- als produced positive results or com- panies still can’t see past the need for employees to stay socially distant (ef- fectively raising real estate costs). Several recent surveys, such as those by Gartner and The Conference Board, show that three-quarters or more of U.S. businesses say they are at least likely to continue increased BUYERS SIDE 16 CHANNEL VISION | July - August, 2020