Remote working is the way to function post-pandemic. But how did it begin in the first place?

Working with remote teams is not a new concept. It has evolved over the years through various business models. It is a tried and tested working model which has proved to be helpful for companies planning to expand their operations in foreign countries.

For instance, if we look at the evolution of business models used to expand businesses, outsourcing and freelancing have used remote working to a great extent. The majority of the IT, telecommunication, and marketing industries have used this model to expand their businesses globally.

India for instance saw a major boom in IT and other services due to outsourcing and subsidiary formation. India’s open-door economy has welcomed many foreign companies to establish their business in India. In addition, the industries and services in India easily adapted to remote working during COVID-19 pandemic. To get a clear understanding of how India’s business sector has evolved over years and how it has become a top destination for global business expansion, refer to our blog The best route for global business expansion in India.

Remote Working and Its Benefits

In remote work, anyone with the right talent, skill set, and qualifications can find a job without any geographical barriers. The misconception that only technological, non-core processes, and IT-based industries can function remotely has completely changed. The COVID-19 pandemic has boosted the confidence of many SMEs to function remotely. Now, various functions in industries like healthcare, pharmaceuticals, accounting, media, and even legal services are carried out smoothly through remote working.

There was a time when working remotely was considered difficult, as technology didn’t exist. The emergence of cloud computing, video conferencing, and advanced communication technologies have made it easy to work in a dynamic and productive remote environment!

Remote working inspires employees to look beyond their local work territories, and explore work options worldwide with high international wages. Building remote teams with employees who wish for flexibility, varied experience, and higher growth works best for small and medium-sized enterprises that wish to test their business internationally.

Remote team building is exactly what an EOR can help you achieve. An Employer Of Record services will be your legal employer and build a remote team for your business and will look after all the HR-related responsibilities to simplify the business expansion journey of a company.

Let us understand how the ever-evolving business model of remote working has helped various services and business functions worldwide. This will give a clear view of numerous business options to choose from, to function and excel in today’s remote business world!

Expansion of Business Services Through Remote Team Building

Healthcare

The traditional doctor-patient relationship has thrived and is now building through telecommunication, digital media, and other health technology. Digitization gave rise to connected health, also referred to as technology-enabled care that helps you access quality care and consultation.

The number of patients preferring television has increased by 50% since 2020. In addition, the defense and military services have incorporated telecommunication and telemedication in their training. They have also made impressive use of these remote services for the treatment of injuries on battlefields and on inaccessible grounds.

IT and ITES service

IT and ITES services have been spearheading the remote working model for decades. In fact, many companies have excelled during the COVID-19 pandemic by building remote teams and wish to adhere to it even during normalcy. For instance, in India, 90% of IT employees and approximately 70-80% of BPO firms, e-commerce, and SMEs have shifted to permanent work from home and acknowledged the success of remote work.

Many IT leaders and CEOs decided to adopt cloud technologies and cloud-delivered applications such as software as a service (SaaS).

To make business status tracking, team communication, and interactions easy, and to avoid any challenges during remote working, numerous new software and applications were developed by ITES.

As with the right set of tools, everything can be simplified in remote working. These are a few examples that can simplify working with remote teams globally.

1.	Google Drive	It is an easy-to-use cloud-based solution that ensures the safe sharing and storage of documents. Files can be edited and documented collaboratively and the remote teams receive real-time updates and edits.
2.	HelloSign	It’s an e-signature platform on which up to 20 people can sign and get the document in their files. The entire document can be customized as per the brand’s identity
3.	Userlane	It is an easy-to-use software, which helps companies guide employees regarding the usage of any software. It is very useful in creating a step-by-step segmented guide that gives a walkthrough entire software process

Human Resources

Human resources as a business function is growing rapidly in the teleworking switch today. Finding the right employees remotely despite the geographical barriers and retaining employees virtually is at times challenging for human resources professionals. HR services or HR teams have opportunities for improving internal communications rather than just providing employees with company information. Increasing the use of collaborative tools and cloud-based HR software helps in smooth business continuity in any organization.

In addition, the deployment of advanced software such as Applicant tracking system (ATS), payroll system, and leave and attendance tracking systems ensure precise and effective payroll solutions. Adoption of in-built surveys and employee engagement tools also provide room for improvement and growth and help employees stay content within the company virtually.

 Entertainment, Media, and Animation

The entertainment, media, animation, and content development services have changed the way we perceive, produce, and portray content. Heavy investments in virtual reality, animation, and special effects, and bolstering streaming services such as Disney Hotstar, Netflix, and Amazon Prime have transformed the media landscape. Digital media revenue has increased by 31% in 2020 and will continue to rise throughout 2022.

The constant need for advanced augmented reality games, for an enhanced at-home gaming experience, has provided innovative business expansion opportunities for various remote working teams such as video designers. For example, in 2020, games created for Facebook’s Oculus Quest and Quest 2, accounted for 1 million dollars, with just the headsets bringing in over a billion dollars.

Education

Remote education has been under the radar post-pandemic. The flexible delivery of e-learning lectures and tutorials has been instrumental in acquiring multifunctional knowledge in the comfort of our homes. Interactive e-learning tools, along with freedom from constant supervision fuel remote learning students to work and study harder. They are responsible for their own skill and education.

Coursera, an e-learning platform, recorded the registration of 20 million new students in 2021. Regionally, Africa witnessed up to 50% growth in online course enrollment and a growth of 48% in terms of student registrations.

Remote team building in education services has been instrumental in educating school officials, teachers, and parents regarding student learning and social care during the pandemic. In fact, the majority of the remote solutions curated for imparting education and training online are free universally and cater to multiple languages.

Engineering Design and Drafting

As the book by Stephen Bayley and Terence Conran rightly says, “Design is intelligence made visible”. Nothing concrete can be built without a detailed outline or design.

Remote designing services have proved to be extremely important for accessing qualitative work in shorter timespans. The large, interdisciplinary, and advanced Systems-of-Systems (SoS) can be developed due to the evolving Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach.

In fact, such an approach has helped in the emergence of remote engineering design teams. These teams comprising skilled and talented professionals, help you develop designs for any of engineering focus. These include mechanical, civil, architectural, aerospace, nuclear, and many more.

Accounting and Financial Services

Over the past decade, banking and financial services have embraced digitization, improved customer experience, and hence streamlined banking services even during the new normal. The development of UPI and other payment gateways (GooglePay, Paypal) has increased the adaptability of digital payment into various sectors such as retail, e-commerce, wellness, insurance, and saving schemes.

In these services, almost all the accounting functions can be carried out remotely. Be it taxing, auditing, bookkeeping, budgeting, forecasting, or even maintaining investor relationships, everything can be carried out through a remote model of working. In addition, there are opportunities to develop remote working systems in areas such as Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) which at times require in-person collaboration. With proper training for banking officials and advanced data protection strategies, financial services can definitely thrive and succeed through remote working.

Digital Marketing

Modern marketing techniques have blurred the lines between branding and PR and have developed data-driven marketing strategies. For any SME who wants to expand their business internationally, digital marketing becomes the voice of the company. It helps connect to customers globally through social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, and emails.

As the world moves into the digital era, it has predominantly followed the mobile-first approach. Hence, it is important to develop mobile-friendly marketing material that incorporates multimedia like videos, photos, and so on. Many companies are heavily investing in these digital remote digital workforces to develop top-notch digital marketing strategies.

Data Analytics

Various industries around the world are embracing big data and data analytics due to its operational gain and high efficiency. With the help of advanced computing tools such as Microsoft excel, python, and SQL, data analysts function to convert raw data into conclusive and meaningful insights. These insights provide light on the business problems and deduce a statistical solution. With the growth of various industries, the importance of data generation, sharing and storage has increased over the decades.

In data analytics, from scrutinizing raw data to analyzing and interpreting it, everything can be done on a computer remotely. As per the Jobs of tomorrow report 2020, data analytics and Artificial intelligence have shown the highest growth rate of up to 41% per year.

With the growth of the new era of remote and location-independent working, big data analysis, virtual team building, and the development of advanced computing techniques, we can definitely see that remote data analytics functioning is here to stay and will always be in demand!

Back office support workforce

The back office workforce is an integral part of many end-use industries such as telecommunication, retail, and e-commerce, across the globe. It involves non-core business functions such as data entry, IT support, content creation and moderation, and query management, which is an overview focus on enhancing customer experience. Various companies outsource these functions to focus on expanding their business.

This is how BPOs (Business Process Outsourcing) emerged in the market and have helped various business sectors attain scalability while promising highly efficient and reproducible results. Accenture, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) are a few renowned names that provide diverse BPO services worldwide. ADP is another well-known name that handles HR and payroll management for varied companies across the world. When we talk about countries, India is now a popular digital hub that has grown its BPO-IT industry over the past ten years. Remunance has been successful in providing end-to-end HR solutions to SMEs from various services. Here are a few instances of how we helped companies set their foot in India.