Mastek as an organization puts its customers first and believes in delivering maximum value to them. At the core of its ability to do so, are the high degree of talent and commitment of its people and the ‘ADOPT’ (Advisory, Design, Orchestrate, Prepare and Transition) methodology.
This methodology places heavy emphasis on direct engagement between clients and Mastek consultants working on the clients’ site, supported by a team of offshore colleagues. The tremendous success of Mastek illustrates that this model is a strong fit for the industry’s way of working and culture.
However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this entire methodology was called into question, as was the short to medium-term future of the implementations we run. Given the ‘on-site’ centricity of the Mastek model, was it going to be possible to continue work at an appropriate pace?
Was client engagement going to suffer to such an extent that project milestones would be materially impacted? Would the technical infrastructure hold together to support such large-scale remote working? And ultimately, would our clients be able to commit to and support their projects so that they could be executed as per the original plan?
The Concept of ‘ADOPT’
It has been many weeks since the onset of the global pandemic and the associated lockdown, and things have worked out incredibly well for Mastek, in spite of all of us working remotely! And this has been possible only due to our people’s strong will to deliver our methodology of implementing Oracle Cloud solutions, which is rooted in the concept of ‘ADOPT not Adapt’.
The logic here is that organizations ‘ADOPT’ the core Oracle product and its configurable components, rather than adapting the product to achieve business outcomes based on a historical way of working and customization of the solution. ‘ADOPT not Adapt’ serves our clients and Mastek well and will continue to do so throughout the pandemic and long after it has ended, allowing high-quality industry-leading software to be delivered to aggressive deadlines.
However, whilst the concept of ‘ADOPT’ has proven to be highly successful even in the most challenging of times, we have seen that in the current situation adaptability, on a personal, project and organizational level has been essential. Moving to an exclusive remote working model literally overnight has highlighted our collective ability to adapt.
What is most impressive is that if we had planned our move to a remote model in normal circumstances, considering future delivery timelines, it would probably have taken upwards of twelve months to complete such a project. Yet, when placed in a situation with no alternatives, the change took place in a matter of hours!
Mastek’s Approach for Tackling the Crisis
It is remarkable how organization-wide remote working has supported the required day-to-day progress of our projects. As mentioned earlier, face-to-face engagement is integral to both the Mastek methodology and our clients’ ways of working. The pandemic challenged this dynamic overnight and we all at some point inwardly questioned whether remote working on such a scale could be made to work.
Similarly, our clients initially questioned the fundamental viability of continuing with their large-scale implementations. So how did this work out in practice? We held on to our collective nerve, put processes and controls in place for supporting remote working and rapidly readied the IT infrastructure for the pressure that remote working brings.
To make this remote working model work, virtual meetings have been employed extensively facilitating excellent engagement between our clients and the Mastek team, resulting in no work being impacted by COVID-19.
These efforts have paid off and all the augmentations we have carried out have been held together expertly to date. Be it our internal teams or our clients, we have received an incredible response to our approach in these testing times, even from our most senior stakeholders.
To illustrate our collective success, two of the local government projects that we are currently working on, are in critical phases and in spite of the fact that the local government sector is currently facing intense pressure to support local communities due to the pandemic, both the projects are progressing as per the plan in the middle of a global lockdown!
We were able to achieve this owing to the collaboration, drive and determination of all the people involved, the use of world-class technology and our delivery methodology, that too with a remote working tweak.
What we have Learned from this Unique Experience
We should never forget the adaptability and resilience of our species or be over-reliant on the previously perceived norms of what can be achieved, how it can be achieved and when it can be achieved.
Businesses will learn a great deal from this experience and will continue to reap the benefits of remote working. We expect remote working to increase, remote technology to continue improving and, for some, the necessity to spend time ‘on the road’ to reduce. Clearly this will need to be managed appropriately, but its positive effects on employee health (physical and mental), work-life balance and employee effectiveness could be immense.
Situations like these bring people and communities closer. For instance, with clients and Mastek achieving some remarkable milestones collectively in these challenging times, all our project stakeholders have formed a stronger bond with each other.
If the new ways of working are to some degree continued, there will be benefits on a global scale, one very prominent benefit being lower pollution levels. Studies suggest that pollution-related deaths have already dropped by thousands in Europe and in some of the most polluted cities on earth deadly particulate matter has been reduced by up to 60%.
These learnings illustrate that despite the dreadful pain and suffering caused by COVID-19, we have all been given an opportunity to bring out something very positive from this crisis.
