By Taher Behbehani, General Manager and Head of Mobile B2B Business at Samsung Electronics America

Speed matters in a crisis. It is not enough to make the correct decision or create the right product when responding to a public health crisis. Decisions and products lose their value if made and distributed too late to help people and businesses in need.

At Samsung, we took the rapidly changing conditions as seriously as possible. Having lived and worked through the SARS epidemic of the early 2000s, I knew firsthand what the ramifications of this disease could be, and I understood that the top priority had to be keeping our people safe. So, we quickly made the call to have our teams work from home. Despite the sudden and disruptive nature of the shift, they have handled it all remarkably. I am enormously proud of how seamlessly our people have transitioned over to remote work, and how we as an organization have been able to continue helping our customers without missing a beat.

But it’s important to realize, helping our customers means so much more than simply offering new products or services.

It means making sure hospitals have the solutions they need to provide care. It means giving businesses a way to keep their operations going, students a way to keep learning, and families a way to stay connected. That’s why, in early March, I realigned the team and put together a mobile B2B task force that works directly with customers to develop the solutions they need and bring them to market as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Protecting healthcare workers and patients

For instance, we spoke directly with doctors and healthcare workers to figure out exactly which solutions would be most helpful. One thing we heard, over and over, was that freeing up space in hospitals and clinics was crucial to both preserving capacity and lowering transmission rates. One way to do that, the doctors said, was to help patients monitor symptoms — of chronic diseases or even of a potential COVID-19 infection — from home.

So, Samsung has worked with partners, like Vivify and Masimo, to create prepackaged kits to reduce unnecessary hospital visits. With Vivify, we created a kit that contains a Samsung smartphone that, when unboxed, automatically connects to the network and loads the appropriate Vivify software. The device can be shipped directly to the patient and does not need to be unboxed before it arrives at the patient’s home. Patients can securely upload their health data to their provider, who then can monitor and triage thousands of patients at once without in-person visits. This system keeps patients from overloading the hospital system but gives providers the information they need to make the decision as to if and when they need to come in. And with Samsung Knox, the phone and data are secured, giving patients and healthcare providers peace of mind.

Enabling remote work

Similarly, we reached out to businesses to ask which specific challenges they needed help overcoming to help ensure their people had the best possible working environment outside the office. They told us that they needed a solution that used as few devices as possible — preferably, devices that users were already familiar with — in order to keep their people connected, collaborative and productive.

For the new at-home workforce, we put together a solution centered around Samsung DeX, which uses a Galaxy smartphone to power a full desktop-like experience. With DeX, a smartphone or tablet can effectively function as a PC with connectivity and more. When plugging a DeX-enabled mobile device into a monitor, your teams gain access to their most important apps: productivity software, office solutions and team communication tools. And that’s to say nothing of extra features like the ability to use the S Pen, 5G connectivity, and remote configuration managed by your IT team. With DeX, working from home is simple, secure, and of course, cost-effective.

Preparing for the future

These are just two of the many solutions we’ve worked with partners to develop. From using Galaxy smartphones to create mobile hotspots for homes without broadband connections, to building out educational tools by bundling our hardware with services from Google and Microsoft, to keeping supply chains going by offering technology built for frontline environments, we understand that times like these require companies like Samsung to step up and offer innovative solutions that can make a real impact.

It is not possible to have all of the answers today. The future is still hazy, and navigating it will require collaboration between Samsung, our partners, our clients and, yes, even our competitors. The solutions that worked yesterday aren’t going to work tomorrow. It’s up to all of us to bring our best minds and technologies together in order to support our people, our communities and our businesses.

And as we continue on that journey, know that Samsung is here to support you and your business — just as we always have been. We are ready to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

(Source: Samsung Insights)