The coronavirus pandemic is unlike anything most of us have ever experienced, affecting every aspect of our personal and professional lives and changing behaviors and practices around the world. As countries have enacted new regulations to slow the spread, it has created a “new normal” for all of society, and with that comes a high level of uncertainty.

I’ve spoken before about the challenges that come with VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) conditions, but what we are seeing now is even more than that. This is truly a “beyond-VUCA” environment, and it is going to require stronger focus and resolve to weather the storm.

As we’ve seen, overcoming this crisis will also call for new levels of cooperation — among people, among governments and among businesses. When dealing with something that’s so far-reaching in scale, no one can overcome it independently, and we are especially thankful for those around the world who have mobilized to contain the outbreaks and deliver important health services. Only by working together can we ensure that we reach the end of this pandemic with the best possible outcomes.

At AspenTech, our thoughts have been with our customers in particular, as these are the companies that form the critical supply chain responsible for so many items that are needed in times of crisis: from pharmaceuticals and medical supplies to energy and fuel, among many other products. At the same time, they have to focus on keeping their employees and families safe, all while responding to dynamic shifts in supply and demand that change daily as global markets react.

Given the complex, multifaceted challenges these companies are dealing with, our focus on enabling customer success has never been stronger. It’s absolutely essential that these businesses continue operating safely and reliably, and we are adapting the ways we work to ensure they remain productive even in these trying conditions.

Specifically, we are striving to provide workforces around the world with the critical information they need to continue learning our solutions, whether they’re working from home or onsite. I was particularly encouraged to see that one customer in China had showcased how they were working from home with our products, learning the features and preparing to share their experience so they could scale up usage across the team.

We have also extended a free eLearning offer to our customers, and hundreds of them have already taken advantage of the opportunity as they use this time to upscale and become more fluent in the technology. To further enable that, we’ve also taken measures to ensure that we can quickly respond to and support any time-critical process issues that our customers encounter in their operations.

Optimizing for efficiency will be at a premium going forward, even as onsite staffing levels are reduced at many facilities, and we are doing everything we can to ensure that our customers can achieve their goals by using our solutions. We will continue to virtualize many of our training programs, allowing customers who are working remotely to fully experience the sessions even when they’re not in the office. We are also exploring ways to virtualize the implementations of our solutions, we will ramp up our technical webinar offerings over the coming weeks, and we will be finding new ways to help our customers increase their proficiency and achieve certification in our products.

We are embracing this virtual-first world to make sure that when our customers need us, we are there to help — and we will continue to find new ways to provide our customers with whatever they need in these trying times. To that end, if you are an AspenTech customer and you have questions regarding any of our products, you can contact us anytime via our customer support site, or send an email to info@aspentech.com.

We also want to support the communities where we (and our customers) operate as they work to maintain public health and safety during this crisis. We have identified 10 locally focused charities that are working on the front lines of the pandemic and have made contributions to each.

Simultaneously, we are adapting our daily work practices to take care of our most important asset — our people. They are the ones who drive our customers’ success, and they will be essential to successfully overcoming these challenges. At AspenTech, we have taken measures to protect our people, just as our customers have, closing many of our offices in favor of remote work arrangements until is deemed safe to work onsite again.

Our customers around the world have stepped up to this considerable challenge over the last few weeks, and I’m proud of how the people of AspenTech have responded to support them. Let’s all continue working together to adapt to changing conditions and make it through these trying times.