As various countries across Europe are now coming out of lockdown, it’s a glimmer of hope for the rest of the world that we can move on, and the pandemic doesn’t have to cause an endless lockdown shutting businesses down for good.
However, the virus has made us aware of the importance of limiting the spread of germs. While the virus may be showing signs of going away, the lasting effects it leaves on people will continue for quite some time.
Businesses are having to adapt their way of working to protect their employees and customers. Social distancing will be the norm for a long time to come, without a vaccine in place, it will be a while before people are confident enough to have close quarter meetings, shake hands, or even share an elevator.
Information technology plays a huge role in allowing corporates to continue to conduct their businesses without social distancing restrictions.
International businesses have used to zoom increasingly to conduct meetings. That has led to a rise in demand for low-cost tablets and iPads.
We’ve seen people use the zoom on iPads and smartphones for social as well as business use. Although it’s possible to use the zoom on a phone, it’s difficult to conduct proper conference style meetings when you’re restricted to seeing just one other person due to the screen size of a phone.
The improved CPU, larger screen, and sharper webcam, an iPad allows several hundred people to do video conferencing and have as much of a feel as a regular in-person conference.
While many pundits have stated that coronavirus may be around for a long time, several years in some instances, a lot of businesses are quite optimistic that the loosening of the lockdown has not resulted in increased infection rates. It would be possible for individuals and companies to go back to normal a lot sooner.
This presents a dilemma for a lot of large businesses with a lot of employees. Do they commit to investing in IT for the long term, spending several thousands of rupees and dollars in investing in new tablets, or do they hire tablets instead? uBookRental is an events IT supply company from the UK, one of the hardest-hit countries in Europe and is coming out of lockdown.
The company used to supply iPads on hire for use in exhibitions and conferences; since covid, their business model has been entirely upturned.
Instead of supplying conferences, they are increasingly providing iPads to schools, to send to low-income households so children can do video conferencing with their teachers from home.
The iPad being ever-so-versatile is used in retail; shops are finding that they have to open more checkouts so they can get customers out quicker to increase the sales. Social distancing means there is a limit to how many people can enter stores, so retailers need to get customers out faster to attract customers in. The iPad can be paired with iZettle devices to create a short term ePOS system.
Instead of investing in costly point of sale systems, they can adapt an iPad which a cheap contactless card reader to take payments. It’s predicted that businesses will have to embrace technology to allow people to maintain social distancing and try to continue their activities while dealing with the pandemic going forward.
