How Utah’s Tech Community is Uniquely Positioned to Weather the COVID-19 Pandemic
Your favorite restaurant might be closed right now, but if you need anything tech-related, we’ve got you covered.
It turns out, Utah’s tech community — and Silicon Slopes as a whole — is perfectly positioned to help business owners and consumers weather the COVID-19 pandemic.
In fact, we’ve been ready for this for years, not specifically as a response to a crisis like this (who could have foreseen the current state of affairs?), but in general, businesses who operate in technology have been thinking about remote work options, new in-house capabilities, and how to digitally serve customers with the same experience as in-person, face-to-face experiences.
The financial services company I lead, Nav, has been staying abreast of closures and recommendations from the CDC, and as of right now, all employees are working remotely. This wasn’t a huge leap because we have several office locations, 6% of our workforce was already remote, and we heavily use video conferencing every day.
The bigger challenge for us was in dealing with our Customer Support team. Because it handles sensitive financial and credit data, it wasn’t as easy as allowing, say, a writer to work remotely. I’m proud to say, though, that we found a way to let that team work from home.
Instilling a Little Creative Genius
The tech community already understands how technology can streamline work, improve productivity, and yes, even keep businesses afloat when doors are locked and the area is a ghost town.
In Utah, we’re lucky enough to have a sizeable number of tech companies. Each one, of course, cares more about its employees’ wellbeing than it does their bottom line. The key is in coming up with creative solutions that keep it business as usual (as much as possible).
The silver lining here is: even if your company has to scramble to come up with these solutions, the way Nav did with making our Customer Support team remote while still adhering to industry regulations, you’ll now have these processes to use even when there’s no crisis to respond to. In fact, innovation is often born from crisis. Let’s keep that in mind as we navigate these murky waters.
Greg Ott is the CEO of Nav, a fintech company that matches business owners with their best financing options for free. Greg has more than 20 years of experience as a leader within both startups and Fortune 500 corporations. Prior to Nav, he served as VP of Marketing for Intuit QuickBooks. Greg has built new organizations and transformed existing ones to be more nimble, innovative, and results-focused. He is an organizational and financial technology thought leader, frequent conference speaker, and contributor to Forbes, Entrepreneur, and other business publications.
