Thanks to recent events, working from home has become more of necessity than a privilege, and many say that it’s not likely we’ll ever make it back to the “business as usual” we had pre-pandemic. In fact, the entire channel has turned its head toward the remote workforce, enticing many experts to give it a nod as a hotbed of future growth. According to Matt Soseman, a Modern Workplace Architect from Microsoft, “I think #WorkFromHome is here to stay. The technology is here—let's take advantage of it.” And Scott Kinka, CTO and Founding Partner of EvolveIP, put it this way, “How do we position the business so the first strategy is the remote strategy?”

This is why ScanSource and Intelisys created the Go Remote sales and enablement campaign to give our partners the tools they need help their customers quickly and efficiently implement remote solutions.

According to a poll conducted by 8x8 of more than 2,500 workers, an overwhelming 99% of respondents would like to work from home—at least some of the time—for the remainder of their careers. Add in the recent pandemic that’s required sustained remote work for several months, and it’s been proven that a large part of our workforce can, indeed, work from home successfully. But, even before the pandemic, the remote workforce had been growing by leaps and bounds. According to FlexJobs + Global Workplace Analytics, from 2016 to 2017, remote work grew by 7.9 percent. Over the last five years, it’s grown by 44 percent, and over the previous 10 years it’s grown by 91 percent.

And since 50 percent of the current workforce holds a job that’s compatible with remote working—according to Buffer’s 2019 report on the State of Remote Work—ScanSource and Intelisys have been looking for new and different ways to connect with our partners and share valuable information about this emerging market. We have a number of resources available through the Go Remote program, including a website, webinars, videos, blogs, The Definitive Guide to Going Remote—and on June 4 we held our Go Remote Virtual Summit.

With more than 1,000 registrations and more than 500 attendees from around the world, our Go Remote virtual event featured 23 supplier sponsors, five hot seat discussions, keynotes from ScanSource executives and coverage from several channel media publishers. Ansley Hoke and Tony Sorrentino from ScanSource and Mark Morgan from Intelisys gave keynote presentations about how partners can set themselves up for success by offering remote solutions and growing their portfolios to include new technologies and suppliers. The hot seat discussions, also known as lightning rounds, covered topics such as UCaaS, CCaaS and collaboration; optimized connectivity and networking; network/IT security; moving to the cloud/remote compute; and workforces of the future.

Partners who missed the live, virtual event can still attend! In total, the Go Remote Virtual Summit generated more than 4.5 hours of on-demand video content, including presentations from 23 speakers and curated content from more than 20 best-in-class suppliers. Partners may access the webcast, resource center, and supplier showcase on-demand through June 18 by visiting www.scansource.com/goremotesummit.

If you’re interested in sourcing remote workforce solutions, contact your ScanSource account team or Intelisys channel manager for assistance.