Innovation, Speed, and Agility: Now and Beyond the Pandemic

On this episode of ClearTalk, host Tyler Kern was joined by CTSI President and CEO Gino Ruta, and Vice President Ron Pusey, to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic highlights a need for rapid deployment of communications technology that extends well beyond the confines of this period of uncertainty.

CTSI is a mission-critical communications service provider, making the company uniquely qualified to help assess the lasting impact of this pandemic and the need for communication solutions in industries like government, healthcare, education, corporate, houses of worship, and other verticals.

Rapid deployment is key in these industries. To highlight the concept of rapid deployment as it relates to critical communications technology, Pusey outlined a recent situation that came about as a result of the novel coronavirus.

“Obviously, this crisis has required a lot of folks to have to respond quickly to their clients’ needs,” he said. “We do a fair amount of business with VCU Health Systems, and they had a critical need to convert 180 of their honor residences back into hospital-ready rooms for their lower-acuity cases. … They called us on a Wednesday, said they needed 72 rooms up the following Monday and another 108 the following Friday. So, we had roughly 10 days to convert 180 rooms.

“We were able to do that through the depth of our resources.”

This kind of rapid deployment has been thrust into the spotlight due to the pressures of the collective response to COVID-19, but, moving forward, it will be even more critical to ensure the world’s industries are prepped not only for the resumption of normal operation, but future disruption.

Still, there’s a balance to be struck between agility and the standards of quality CTSI adheres to, and Ruta said the company is always ready to walk that line.

“What we can do is build on what we’re doing each day to be prepared for rapid deployment,” he said. “And we do that with standards. It can be something as simple as standard drawings for all the technologies that we deploy, standard cables, standard connections … Whenever something comes out and needs to be done very quickly, we’re just accelerating the time frame.”