Starting any role at a new organisation can be daunting – the change of scene, colleagues and environment can all add up. The sense of comfort around your previous five-year, institutionalised spell already a distant memory.
Beginning a new challenge at CTS was something that also garnered a sense of excitement. The five years that I spent working for one of the world’s largest organisations in one of the most densely populated cities was worlds away from working for a bespoke Managed Service Provider in the North West. However, the challenge was no less exciting!
As the only provider of cloud and managed IT services for law firms, CTS have earned a reputation for handling some of the most complex legal firm’s IT systems and applications. All this while allowing their users to work without missing a beat in the ever-changing landscape that is law.
With a new-born baby at home, the month hiatus prior to starting was not the battery recharge it perhaps could have been but a fantastic extra spell of paternity leave, which I thought would have been impossible previously.
Monday 2nd March 2020 marked my first day as part of the CTS family. The first ten full working days in the office were spent meeting the new team (inevitably forgetting many names), gaining access to files and documents, and learning what we do, why we do it and what makes us unique – the office equivalent of running before you can walk to ensure you can start adding value as soon as possible.
During my first two weeks, COVID-19 was a hot topic of conversation, undoubtedly, but still it was not discussed as something that could potentially change our lives forever. Those two weeks flew by as I gained as much knowledge as possible to enable a quick and decisive shift from ‘newbie’ to ‘part of the team’. Little did I know that the ten-day period I had just experience may well be the only ten consecutive days I spend in the office in 2020.
An email came through stating that a company-wide meeting was to take place the following Monday. Our Business Continuity Plan had undergone rigorous rewrites and testing to ensure what was about to happen, did so seamlessly. And before Boris Johnson even gave the order, CTS were sent home – working from home for the foreseeable or as we now simply call it… “working”.
This move was made purely for the safety and well-being of our team. And being a tech company undoubtedly gave us a head start. Agile working is something we refer to regularly and now, we were proving that we, as an organisation, can practice what we preach.
For a new starter in a brand-new role though, the lack of face-to-face interaction came as a bit of a shock. In the short term, I had become another CTS client, requiring guidance, constant support and more Teams meetings that I thought possible.
But this, as I found out quickly, is what we do.
CTS support, guide and manage some of the most complex IT environments around, and are fully committed to providing managed IT services to the legal sector to ensure business continuity, data protection and agile working. Although our new surroundings may have made this more of a challenge, but there is no doubt that we have truly stepped up and flourished.
We still have no real idea of when “normal” will return, if it will at all, but we have clearly demonstrated to our clients, that even in the risk and change-averse legal sector, change is not only possible but extremely beneficial. We have enabled our clients to work from anywhere, anytime, with very little hardware, which has kept the wheel turning – something that would have previously been perceived as impossible.
The future is very uncertain but cloud computing, investing in technology, infrastructure, robust security and managed support will be far higher on the priority list than previously. Without a doubt, first adopters will be the ones to thrive.
As for my short time at CTS, I have learnt how valuable those solutions are, from my personal standpoint, as well as my clients.
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