Woman Working on a Laptop

5 Ways Faster Internet Can Enhance Your Business

Businesses of all sizes in every industry rely on fast internet access to be competitive. The speed of a business’s internet directly affects its success. As technology improves, internet speeds get faster and more reliable.

Traditional cable or DSL internet providers offer speeds between 10 and 30 Mbps (megabits per second.) However, businesses that operate with fiber-based internet experience speeds up to 1000 Mbps. Fast internet for business is essential for ensuring the satisfaction of customers and employees alike.

Keep reading to learn 5 ways faster internet improves your business.

1. Access to High-Speed Internet Reduces Costs

Don’t let the initial startup costs of high-speed internet deter you from signing up for it. The initial costs often pay for themselves through the added efficiency and productivity that your business will experience.

Other direct savings options are available with fast internet for business. High-speed internet offers a telephone service called Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). This gives companies the option to have a telephone voice service connected to their high-speed internet. Depending on the number of employees and extensions your business has, you could save thousands of dollars by connecting a VOIP service to your internet.

VOIP allows your business to make calls through a handset, headset, laptop, tablet, and an app. All your business needs is a connection to high-speed internet to utilize this service. The best part of this telephone service is that caller IDs will register your business name and number.

2. Faster Internet Allows for More Productivity

Businesses majorly lose out on productivity levels if employees are waiting on a slow internet connection to load their work. Most employees in many types of businesses are incredibly reliant on internet access to successfully perform their job.

High-speed internet not only cuts down on the time that employees wait for applications and software to load, but it also supports multi-tasking across multiple applications at once. Delayed internet speeds affect research capabilities, customer service, emails, and in-house communications. All of these areas add up and cause your business to lose valuable time and money.

High-speed internet for business allows employees to operate efficiently between tasks and projects. Employees can complete tasks faster without dealing with the frustrations of a slow internet connection.

Traditional DSL internet easily gets interrupted with:

  • Poor weather conditions
  • Physical breakdowns
  • Electrical interference

These circumstances are far less likely to interfere with high-speed internet.

Reliable connection keeps your customers productive, too. If your business’s website loads slowly or even crashes, customers will be quick to take their business elsewhere. Maintain a loyal customer base with a reliable and fast internet connection.

3. High-Speed Internet Has Better Security

High-speed internet is better equipped against hacking and security breaches compared to traditional internet services. Security breaches present considerable risks and damages to businesses. Recovering from illegal access is always an expensive process.

Preventing security breaches before they happen is the safest and most affordable way to handle the cybersecurity of your business. You don’t want to risk losing valuable information about your business, or about your customers. Customers will not be happy with you if their personal information gets leaked in a data breach.

To further protect valuable data, many businesses backup their data offsite. As the amount of data increases, so does the need for reliable internet service. Slow internet connections interfere with data backups, often leaving some attempts unsuccessful.

Fiber optic internet can accommodate large data transfers. These smooth and quick transfers put your employees, customers, and owners at ease.

High-speed internet also protects your business with:

  • Security systems viewable from anywhere
  • Clear HD imaging
  • Protection against cybercrime
  • Adding phones, tablets, and other devices to your security system

4. Effectively Collaborate Remotely

High-speed internet allows your employees to work remotely with ease. You can extend your talent pool to the entire country if you can effectively operate remotely.

Remote workers depend on quality internet connections in order to successfully collaborate with other remote and in-house team members. Running a successful remote operation also allows you to save money on overhead costs.

Even if your employees only work remotely while traveling, high-speed internet allows them to share files, print necessary documents, and collaborate on company platforms as if they were physically in the office.

Isn’t it frustrating when a video meeting crashes or glitches? Slow internet gets even slower when multiple employees are working at the same time, not to mention an entire team. High-speed internet supports multiple employees each working on multiple devices during the day.

You can count on your video meetings to run smoothly with fiber optic internet. This is guaranteed to make your employees happy because the only thing worse than meetings is meetings that last way longer than they need to.

5. Faster Speeds Improve Cloud Access

The constant need to upload, download, and store items in a business setting is supported by cloud access and remote data storage. Things like software-as-a-service (SaaS), content management systems (CMS), and customer relationship management (CRM) programs rely on the cloud.

Slow internet speeds negatively affect the performance of these programs and applications. If customers on the other end of CRM programs experience a lag in processing data, they will lose their confidence in your business.

Almost all new software programs are designed to rely on fast cloud access. If your business has traditional slow internet, it will directly affect how these programs perform. High-speed internet is essential for utilizing new software that is designed to help your business find more success.

Take Your Business to the Next Level With Faster Internet

Fast internet for business is what takes your profits from good to great. Save money, collaborate productively, and keep your data safe with high-speed fiber optic internet. Faster internet is a valuable investment that pays for itself with the benefits it offers.

Are you ready to take your business to the next level and improve the lives of your employees and customers? Integrated Communications is here to help. Reach out to us to get started today!

Preparing For Data Loss

Data lossData loss incidents, when an organization suffers the loss of valuable data, can cause considerable harm to the business. The loss may be as a result of a natural disaster, fire, or theft, and the impact can be irreparable. Yet statistics show that relatively few organizations adopt robust data protection policies. This is short-sighted because sensitive and important data is held in the cloud, and its loss, even if temporary, can hurt the organization.

Risk of Data Loss

The most likely reason for the loss of data is through a natural disaster, and interestingly, significant portions of the country are at risk in one way or other. Heavy flooding, hurricanes, and earthquakes have a wide geographical spread and one incident can affect a large area, so it’s important to consider not only the business location, but also the location of data servers. In addition to natural events, data may also be lost through fire and theft.

An easy way to understand the business risk is to ask one simple question: What if we lose our data?

Financial Losses

According to a 2014 Global IT Study that surveyed 3,300 respondents, 64 percent of organizations experienced data loss in the last 12 months. The research highlighted that the cost to enterprises of lost data and downtime was $1.7 trillion.

Researchers found that although a high percentage of organizations had disaster recovery plans in place, relatively few had implemented effective data protection practices and less than half employed remote, cloud-based data protection.

Impact of Lost Data

There are two aspects of data loss that affect organizations. Firstly, there’s the loss of the data itself that may include essential operational information, critical customer data, and proprietary information, all of which affects the company’s ability to function. Secondly, there is downtime that inevitably arises from the incident as the organization works to recreate or recover the data. In the worst-case scenario, an organization might have to suspend operations for a period of time, resulting in lost revenue.

Long-Term Impact

Apart from the short-term losses, businesses may incur ongoing difficulties that lead to the loss of customers, lower sales, and long-term reduction in revenue. In many instances this can mean closure or bankruptcy.

Based on the Global IT research, companies need to take the risk of data loss seriously and implement a workable disaster recovery (DR) plan.

Disaster Recovery Plan

Although a comprehensive DR plan needs to consider all aspects of disaster recovery, there can be no recovery if the data is not available. Consequently, at the core of the DR plan must be a process for ongoing data backup and remote storage. Should data be lost, this would mean that it can be recovered, operating systems restored, and business resumed with little delay.

Contingency planning must allow for the possibility of partial or complete loss of data. Additionally, apart from allowing for natural calamities, plans should factor in the risk of man-made catastrophes, such as fire, explosion, equipment failure, and data theft.

Every business faces the possibility of losing data in one way or another. It’s imperative to be ready for a disaster to strike, so that when it does, businesses are able to respond promptly and effectively to restore data and get back online.