There will be plenty of business owners out there who will have experienced the pain that comes from watching an office full of faces rise from their computer screens as the internet grinds to a halt.
When you’re paying good money for a ‘fast’ internet connection, seeing your entire team down tools, through no fault of your own, is incredibly frustrating. It’s enough of an issue for businesses that can work offline, but for those that are entirely online, having sales that don’t go through or projects that can’t be completed can threaten your very survival.
A recent report by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said that fast, reliable internet access was critical to businesses when it came to ‘sourcing information, working with partners and, critically, selling to customers,’ and really, that’s only the half of it. In reality, it can deter businesses from trading online entirely and even put small businesses at risk. That means, rather than a luxury, fast internet has become a necessity.
What does fast internet actually look like?
We hear a lot about superfast broadband from numerous operators, but when searching for fast internet, it’s important to understand what speeds are available to you. The typical broadband cable or DSL service usually provides a speed of between 10 and 25 megabits per second (Mbps). Fibre-to-business services can deliver speeds of up to 25-300Mbps, with some even reaching speeds of up to 1,000Mbps. That kind of speed ensures lighting fast uploading, downloading, video conferencing, SaaS and anything else you need to do.
What are the risks associated with slow broadband?
1. Demotivated staff
Most employees are committed to their jobs and go to work every day with a desire to get as much done as they can. To do so, they expect the company to put the tools in place to allow them to be productive. When a company’s internet connection is not up to the job it can be incredibly frustrating, particularly when there are deadlines to meet, and this inevitably damages team morale. In fact, one study even showed that employees use internet downtime to search for jobs elsewhere – presumably on their phones!
2. Costly delays
In 2015, slow internet cost the UK economy £11bn-a-year in lost productivity. Slow internet means employees have to sit around waiting for file transfers, attachments to download and web pages to open, all causing costly delays in your company’s work flow. Research has shown that the average worker spends 38 hours a year waiting for their company’s network to respond. That’s a week of work, every year for every single employee.
3. Lost profits
As well as the cost of employees not being to work efficiently, there is also likely to be an impact on your bottom line, with slow internet speeds compromising your ability to do business. For example, a delay in the responsiveness of your CRM could detrimentally affect a customer’s experience or impact your ability to respond to customer enquiries quickly. If you run an ecommerce site, this can be incredibly costly.
There’s no doubt the internet has made tremendous advancements in the last decade, but with more businesses around the world competing in the global marketplace, if you can’t access fast internet then you risk being left behind.
