With COVID-19 still a serious concern for business operations at many companies, SMA Technologies has taken a best practices approach to ensuring delivery of services

A lot has happened since the COVID-19 pandemic began, but two things have been our top priorities throughout:

• The safety of our employees and families
• The business operations of our clients

Most frequently asked question from clients: Does SMA anticipate any services being impacted by COVID-19?

SMA Technologies has a comprehensive business continuity plan that covers a pandemic scenario in accordance with its ISO 27001 certification and SOC 2 Type 1 attestation. In response to COVID-19 guidelines set forth by the CDC and WHO, SMA initiated its plan on March 17, 2020.

SMA is a technology company, and this gives us a workforce mobility advantage. Due to having a global team that needs to be able to connect from anywhere, we have technology and security solutions in place to allow all employees to work remotely. This investment has allowed us to deliver services without interruption while continuing to provide security and maintenance updates while continuing to work on new features.

Our employees left our offices around the globe in late March to work from home, and most of them are still doing so. Like many companies, we were worried about drops in productivity, but our people embraced the challenge and showed that they’re highly motivated and solution oriented. They’ve proven that they’re flexible, adaptable, and committed to professional excellence. As a result, we’ve implemented policies going forward to provide stipends for home office equipment and our employees will continue to work remotely for the foreseeable future.

We’ve gone virtual with almost everything.

Support:

Our support team has continued to operate as normal throughout the pandemic, and we have met all of our SLAs. Our client support specialists are dispersed geographically, and this structure has given our clients great coverage without being impacted by regional lockdowns or local restrictions. We do not foresee any changes to our client support infrastructure.

Automation consulting:

Our automation consultants no longer travel to client sites unless clients specifically request it and show they can offer a safe working environment for SMA team members. Our team were able to shift all new installs and other projects to remote access with minimal issues.

Training:

The pandemic sped up the timeline for an initiative that was already in the planning stages. The classes have gone well, and we plan to continue offering virtual training, with the addition of in-person training at our Houston office when health and safety officials deem it acceptable.

Conferences:

So far, we’ve participated in a few virtual conferences and it’s been an interesting experience. One benefit is it allows attendees to access our materials much more easily, but we also miss meeting new and existing clients in person.

We continue to monitor the latest updates and follow guidelines from health and safety authorities. This gives SMA Technologies the best method of ensuring we continue to deliver the support our clients need while we also work on innovations to the OpCon platform that will meet and exceed their future IT I&O automation requirements.

Thank you for your time. If you have any questions, please contact your account executive for additional assistance.