When face-to-face meetings don't work

Follow Us Get the newsletter Hi folks, it's Shelly and Lulu in Hong Kong. China's about to embark on the world's largest work-from-home experiment as employees stay away from the office to avoid spreading the deadly coronavirus.  While scary for humanity, it's likely to provide a shot in the arm to the country's workforce productivity apps. Some experts say the virus threat could keep offices shut for months, prompting workers to turn to video chat, messaging and office collaboration tools to keep their businesses going. It couldn't be better timing for Chinese tech giants like Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance, which were already investing heavily in enterprise software as their growing consumer tech businesses showed signs of slowing down. The sector is also ablaze in the U.S., with the likes of recent hot IPOs like messaging software Slack and video-conferencing firm Zoom. Even Facebook is going after businesses with a communication and collaboration tool called Workplace. "It's a good working opportunity for us to test working from home at scale," Alvin Foo recently told me as we chatted about how he's going to keep his 400-person ad agency running during the outbreak. While locked out of their Shanghai offices, Foo said the team would rely heavily on WeChat, Skype for Business and Office 365. For now, it would replace client visits with video chats. But Foo said the hardest challenge will be replacing brainstorming sessions, in which his creative teams come up with the magic behind their digital campaigns. "Obviously not easy," he said. Shen Peng, the founder of Tencent-backed healthcare startup Waterdrop said the company has already done a test drive for remote working using WeChat. "For tech companies that aren't labor-intensive, it really doesn't make much of a difference when it comes to where they work," he said.  When SARS hit in 2003, months spent in quarantine at home helped usher in the e-commerce boom that gave rise to Alibaba and shopping rival JD.com. Unwilling to leave their homes, many Chinese consumers got hooked on online shopping. The coronavirus outbreak could provide a similar boost to enterprise software providers. Ultra-connected businesses -- already moving toward a more virtual workforce -- could embrace collaborative working technology even more. Which goes to show, there's always opportunity in a crisis, even a deadly one.  If you read one thing Amazon's infamous HQ2 hunt for the biggest treasure of government subsidies was driven by a bout of Elon Musk envy. Sponsored Content by Darktrace We've entered a new era of geopolitical cyber-threat, where machine-speed attacks threaten to take down entire data centers in a matter of minutes. From municipalities to global banks, thousands of organizations around the world are turning to Cyber AI to fight back. Learn how Darktrace's Autonomous Response takes intelligent, instant action to contain fast-moving threats – before they can do any damage.   And here's what you need to know in global technology news The Iowa Democratic caucuses have been thrown into disarray by a malfunctioning app. The chip industry had its worst year since the dot-com bubble went pop. Tesla's meteoric rise in value is showing no signs of slowing down.   Like Bloomberg's Fully Charged? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more.   You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Fully Charged newsletter. Unsubscribe | Bloomberg.com | Contact Us Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022