Is it high time your business connectivity was brought up to speed?
Is it high time your business connectivity was brought up to speed? Having a slow connection costs the average UK office worker 40 minutes each day, which leads to 21 wasted days each year at a cost of up to £2,100 – more than the average amount of annual leave. This is all caused by time wasting activities such as buffering and downtime – things that technology should be making a lot easier.
But in reality, legacy technology is slowing UK workforces down and this dead time not only means lost opportunities, lost profits and lost customers, it also means a lot of disengaged employees.
Better late than never…
It can be hard to admit that your business has a connectivity problem, especially when you’ve already invested money into it. But if your day-to-day has become a cocktail of frustrated employees, dropped connections and missed sales opportunities, it may be time to upgrade your internet connection.
Why? Because the infrastructure that houses your data and provides access to email, the internet and business-critical applications is actually the beating heart of any business. If your technology isn’t reliable, then what else matters? If your employees don’t know whether they’ll be able to use the phone that day or access their emails, how can they serve your customers?
They can’t. And your business can’t grow if your internet connection is holding you back.
But don’t panic. There has never been a better time to transform your tech, and you don’t have to break the bank to implement real change.
Make up for lost time
The first step any business should take is to understand what broadband connection options are available to them, but also what is the most appropriate. Think of it as buying a car. It’s easy to go for the fastest and latest that’s out there. And while it’s true that no business in today’s fast-moving world can exist without a fast and reliable internet connection, the quickest may not necessarily best suit your needs.
If you work in a small office with up to 20 employees, superfast fibre broadband gives you a low-latency, high-speed connection. The solution is ideal if you use a hosted voice (VoIP) system, conduct video conferencing, upload files to the cloud or use bandwidth-hungry applications. With download speeds of up to 76 Mbps and uploads of up to 19 Mbps, fibre broadband can help you if you’re looking for extra speed that real-time applications demand.
For larger businesses where cost is a major factor, you might want to consider ultrafast broadband which represents a huge step up in price and performance. A relatively new alternative to existing broadband offerings, it’s a serious competitor to generic Ethernet connections.
Ideal for businesses with more than 20 users, ultrafast boasts download speeds of up to 300 Mbps and upload speeds of 48 Mbps, with unlimited data usage and less than 30ms latency. All of this makes it the perfect solution for powering CRM systems, cloud-based storage applications and video conferencing tools.
But what does that mean in the day-to-day?
Ultrafast speeds do more than just power technologies, they also unlock new behaviours. By upgrading your infrastructure, your business can suddenly find itself in a position to share data in near-instant fashion between sites; the synchronisation of databases which would take place overnight with traditional connections are suddenly instantaneous; and geographically dispersed teams can collaborate continuously without any downtime.
Time for something different?
For a step even further, March this year saw the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) launch its Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme in an attempt to level the playing field for business connectivity.
Gigabit-capable connections are delivered over fibre optic lines and provide speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps – equal to 1 Gbps – that support business-critical applications such as cloud data storage, cybersecurity systems and back-ups and services such as voice and video conferencing with ease.
Through the provision of vouchers that offer up to £2,500 towards the cost of previously-expensive installation charges eligible businesses can quickly leverage a huge range of emerging digital services and communication channels in no time at all.
So it’s absolutely possible that UK small and medium-sized businesses can achieve wonders with faster internet speeds, as long as there are the tools available to enable sustainable growth. With options aplenty, the most important thing is to ensure that your business is planning, preparing and profiting from reliable and robust internet connectivity.
