ONLINE – PHYSICAL

While we keep waiting for the physical world to come back; work, education, fun, frolic, transactions, meetings to happen, heart of heart the realisation is looming large in everybody’s mind and heart, that the disruption has already happened, it would only be a matter of time to unravel. To the thinking heads, another realisation has dawned that many things we did professionally as a part of our work in hindsight does not make business sense. The costs involved in large number of these activities besides sucking the professional of his energy and time didn’t deliver anything worthwhile.

The heavy cost of meetings, inclusive of the travel involved for that purpose looks like a already defeated proposition. The free and paid apps for this purpose has brought the world to the meeting table, in a manner nobody could have ever imagined. From the high end telepresence of Cisco to the free versions of Zoom have all been accepted. Country cousins of the new bold meeting world. The high end meetings in the best of the corporate offices or the best of the hotels at the best of the business / fun locations all across the face of this earth, now will not make any business sense. The strolley pulling professionals getting inside squeaking meeting room doors hopefully would be the scenes left behind. In the peace of your home or may be office you are able conduct a meeting at ease, focus and costs all under your control.

Like the way we talk about Cyber-Physical for the Industrial Revolution 4.0, the COVID-19 world and henceforth would be known as ”Online – Physical World.” Come to think of it what we called as online till the other day, looks like a sham of what a online world can be. It has happened nearly surreptitiously and as we move further it would be our job to distil the wheat from the chaff. What it means is that we should decide what all can be done effortlessly, activities which happen better online than physical. This should be allowed to continue in the manner it is right now and as we move further it should be perfected.

Work From Home is there stay, however much we would want to do away with it. The benefits are immense. Few of discrepancies have to ironed out, made full high tech enabled with functional protocols and then watch the fun. Different industries and enterprises from different sectors would decide on the synthesis of the two. There are industries and professions where the work can fully move to home. Online has gained the right meaning, the freedom to work from the location of your choice. Earlier offices were online, now the world has become online. Education is on a speed rail, it would transform sooner that we can imagine of. If we were to go back to pre-COVID-19 status, it would be a sad commentary, an adverse knack of losing successful business and professional models.

ONLINE – PHYSICAL IS THE EMERGING NEW BUSINESS MODEL, ADOPTING IT SHOULD BE THE NATURAL CHOICE.
Sanjay Sahay

Safety is home!