To our clients and partners,
Much has changed in our world since NetGain’s last quarterly newsletter. Many of you are likely reading this from your home rather than your office. While a global pandemic is certainly not something I expected to deal with as a CEO, I am proud of the way NetGain employees have come together with their co-workers and clients in response to this crisis.
This is undeniably a challenging time for most Americans. During challenging times, it is even more important we rally together to support one another. There is also a silver lining in this time of crisis: out of adversity often comes ingenuity. Using this time to keep moving forward while we support our fellow Americans has the potential to spark new ideas and new ways of operating. I have the utmost conviction we will come out on the other side of this crisis better than before.
The changing I.T. landscape in the time of COVID-19
COVID-19 has forced businesses to confront a host of new and different challenges across various critical business functions. Undeniably, information technology has been a hotbed of change as many businesses transitioned their employee base to remote work. This has affected basic day-to-day business operations and created more complex technological and collaboration challenges. One of our partners, Microsoft, is seeing a 200% increase in Microsoft Teams meetings alone from 900 million on March 16th, to 2.7 Billion on April 9th. NetGain is here to assist any business with their remote work strategy, or that may have remote work operations in place but needs assistance operating effectively. It is our goal to help the small business community operate as efficiently as possible in the wake of this crisis.
With the shift to remote work, we have also seen a second, and far more concerning, trend in cyberattacks. Barracuda networks reported a 667% increase in spear-phishing email attacks related to COVID-19. While Cybersecurity was the #1 concern for many businesses before the global pandemic, it must be top of mind for all business leaders with this influx of attacks. It is imperative to ensure your organization’s risk is minimized by putting certain protective measures in place like two factor authentication, end user security awareness training, endpoint protection, and more. Now is a great time to remind your employees to stay diligent against cyber criminals who will use this crisis to take advantage of computer users. Be wary of suspicious links, emails, and web pages, and if you are not sure of the sender or link, do not click on anything and report it to your I.T. department.
If you need any assistance with remote work or other technology-related initiatives during this time, NetGain has a COVID-19 Response Page with many helpful resources. As always, feel free to contact us directly for assistance as well. We are here to help.
Q1 Successes
Every year NetGain selects a theme that drives our goals and decision-making throughout the year. Our theme for this year is “Every Client and Every Employee Matters”, and that could not be more relevant with the pandemic situation at hand.
Over the first quarter, we worked incredibly hard to shore up our internal processes that drive client success and satisfaction. It is our hope you have felt the effect of these changes. As always, if you have any feedback on ways we can continue to improve, please share those with your NetGain Account Representative.
Today, we are to assist clients wherever needed so that they can continue to run their businesses as seamlessly as possible. We could not achieve this without the help of our employees, who have been extremely dedicated to client needs at this time.
In this time of social distancing it is also critically important we stay connected culturally. At NetGain, we have implemented a virtual happy hour every Friday and maintain communications on our Microsoft Teams “Company Water Cooler” channel. We share recipes, fun memes, pictures of our home offices, and more. This keeps us in contact with each other and helps foster a team mentality, even when we aren’t in the office together. I feel that this is an important aspect to maintaining our core value of winning together.
Finally, keeping our employees top of mind helped us win a Best Places to Work in Kentucky award for the sixth year in a row. We will continue to strive to be a supportive and positive workplace where everyone is excited to come to work every day. We are honored to be awarded this accolade alongside many other great companies. Congratulations to all Best Places to Work winners.
I firmly believe if we continue to put client and employee success at the forefront of everything we do, we will come out of this crisis stronger.
NetGain Honors and Recognition Q1 2020
Recognition for outstanding work by employees goes to:
- Sales, Technology OneSource: Carl Crosby
- Sales, Professional Services: Wayne Logan
- Finance and Administrative: Shelly LaRue
- Technology OneSource Engineer: Mike McHale
- Professional Services Engineer: Jake Eaker
- Tactical Operations Team: Chris Turner
- Client Success: Deuce Towe
- Sales Support: Randy Preston
- North Carolina Branch: Terry Rudolph
Looking Ahead
Inevitably, this time is filled with uncertainty. One thing I have reiterated to the entire NetGain team is that hard work and the support of those around us will get us through these uncertain times. I am proud of the accomplishments we were able to achieve in Q1, and though things have shifted significantly since January, I am confident in our ability to continually serve our clients well as we move in to Q2. Our strong sense of community, both towards our employees and our clients, is more important than ever. We will continue to foster this as time goes on, even after social distancing protocols are lifted. We must focus on the positives in a time like this and reflect on how our country as a whole has come together during such an unprecedented situation. I hope everyone stays safe and well as we head into this next quarter.
