Regardless of the country, businesses around the world have been surprised by the COVID-19 pandemic and have faced several challenges. Motsai is no exception.
Although we consider ourselves lucky not to evolve in areas that are seriously affected – such as tourism – our short-term forecasts have had to be revised, our procedures have been revised and our team spirit will have been proven.
March 2020 – surprises and big slowdown
While the Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet, it is interesting to look back on the past 25 months which have been, more often than not, a roller coaster ride. There is no doubt that this virus which still affects our lives to this day has forced us (and will continue to do so) to adapt the way we do our daily activities.
In this series of articles, we would like to review the effects of the pandemic to date on the logistics of technology companies, business development, production of products and services, etc. And since Motsai has also been transformed by these changes, let us tell you how we’ve been through it and how we’ve adjusted since March 2020.
The first week of prudence and slowdown
It’s fair to say that everyone was taken by surprise by the first lockdown and the sudden closure of businesses, schools, etc. All companies were now operating in an atmosphere of complete uncertainty and for most of them, prudence was the new watchword. Health care among colleagues, but also prudence in investment and development spending.
Motsai is a smart sensor development company, but also, we offer a support service to companies working in a wide range of connected industries. The vast majority of our customers thought of putting on ice the current projects and especially the projects which were about to start because their production had fallen. We therefore experienced a significant slowdown in the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
However, it didn’t last long, at most a few weeks. When it became clear that the pandemic would last for several months (or even years), almost all of our customers adapted their methods to the new reality of social distancing and teleworking while continuing to develop their new products. Others have taken the necessary step back to start investment and development projects thanks to the various programs set up by the government.
The daily life of the team at Motsai
It is not only the continuity of our clients’ projects that have been a source of concern for Motsai’s management: how to ensure that we maintain the high quality of our work as well as good cohesion in our teams?
In the first few weeks, our goal was simply to ensure that everyone was properly settled in their own place. The founder, Jean-Samuel Chenard even had a feeling of returning to the past because in the early days of the company, he worked from home, in the same office where he moved back in March 2020.
The real challenge is, even to this day, for the employees who use the lab to create, develop and test the prototypes as a team. From their living room, in the basement, in a guest room or a free space in the house, our team adapts to teleworking, virtual meetings, calling or writing emails. On the other hand, it is a whole other adjustment to succeed in manufacturing a prototype, to test its durability, to develop a future sensor and all that makes the daily life of the members of our team accustomed to working in the laboratory.
Fortunately, we have a team that has adapted quickly and effectively. We set up a system that made it possible to move projects forward while respecting all health instructions, even as they evolve over time. We are as dynamic as we are creative when it comes to finding a solution to continue working from home.
As for the cohesion of the team, it was obvious that although we remained very productive, we needed to talk to each other and to see each other (even virtually). Thus, from the second week of health measures, the whole team would meet virtually once a week to simply check in. There is no doubt that these meetings have helped enormously in quickly creating a sense of belonging to the new team members who have joined us in the past year. It would have been possible for Motsai to honor internship requests bringing people into the team even without the chance to meet them in person.
What does the future hold for us?
No one knows what the pandemic still has in store for us or how long it will last, but what we have learned over the last 19 months is that it takes more than a virus to stop the innovation and people’s creative spirit: both our customers, our partners and our team.
They all played an undeniable role in the success of Motsai in 2020 and 2021. Supporting significant growth during the pandemic is possible, we just have to keep flexibility and have confidence in our team capacity to face import challenges.