Distance can’t keep us apart

To all Backbasers, clients, partners, suppliers and friends,

These are turbulent times and planning ahead has never felt more uncertain. But both with individuals and businesses, promoting safety and wellbeing is our top priority. And the world has really come together to make that happen. So it’s in that spirit that I find myself reflecting on some of the exemplary behaviour that I’ve seen within our Backbase family.

I’d like to take a moment to share with you the compassion, creativity and resilience that’s been demonstrated at our organization, and with partners and clients.

We’re a digital-first company with offices all around the world. So bringing together teams remotely is part of our day-to-day lives. Mind you, usually that means connecting Atlanta or Singapore with Amsterdam, and not colleagues who live two blocks apart. But here we are. The unprecedented scale of our entire company working remotely in such a short turnaround time naturally offered some challenges. But a few small hiccups aside, the process has been quite smooth.

If there’s a silver lining in all of this, it’s the strength and innovation of the human connection. We may be physically isolated, but we remain close and invent new ways of working. After over a week of staying at home, this feels truer now more than ever.

Across the entire company, teams and individuals each did their part to keep our sense of community intact — from virtual coffee dates to Friday afternoon drinks. At the same time, people really stepped up to keep the engine running on both the product development and customer implementation sides of the business.

We know our clients are also troubled by the same challenges. And they’re also putting in the effort to keep their strategic projects running, working outside their comfort zones and making sure we move in the right direction.

We had two clients this past week alone that, with incredible collaboration, executed new project inception workshops 100% remotely. Normally these inceptions are done face-to-face, so key project stakeholders can discuss differing points of view, priorities, and challenges. Suffice to say, being in the same room really helps with gaining alignment on the scope and underlying execution plan.

So for these remote projects, it wasn’t as easy. But it was extremely encouraging to see that everybody worked together and — as one team — we delivered. Digital collaboration technology may be the enabler, but at the end of the day, it’s human determination that’s truly inventive.

We can do this, together. If we empower one another, we will continue to find new, creative ways of working. It’s very much about our commitment to take accountability and make things succeed. We’re lucky — as knowledge workers, it only takes some changes to adapt to our current reality and stay productive.

So now it’s our responsibility to step up our game, to be inventive and create the new normal. That’s why as a technology company, we’ll be sharing every tip and trick we know for making remote working as effective as possible.

So stay safe, stick together (but at a distance), and keep on innovating.

- Jouk