As businesses we’re becoming increasingly connected. Nearly every role in every business uses the internet at some point in their daily work. We’re not going to go on about smart fridges and self-driving cars right now, but it’s safe to say that online services are going to be more, not less important moving forward.
It’s important for businesses to recognise which internet-enabled services are crucial to their day-to-day operations. Will you still be able to meet customer requirements if your CRM is unavailable for example?
You might not think that that your business has that many essential services powered by the internet, so we’ll run through a few just to show how important it can be.
Nearly every business now uses some form of internet-based communications. The age of fax and landlines is definitely over. Whether you’re using a unified communications service like Microsoft Teams or our own Horizon platform, or are using a more traditional phone system, the vast majority of voice communication is hosted over the internet.
This is generally a good thing for business. Internet-based calls are cheaper, more reliable and offer your team a lot more flexibility in terms of how many can take place at any one time.
And soon, you’ll have no choice but to route calls over the internet. BT are switching off the UK’s ISDN and PSTN landlines, and all calls will be routed online by 2025.
To ensure great audio quality, and to avoid calls dropping out, you need a reliable internet connection.
This is a crucial one for the retail and hospitality sectors. Can your business operate effectively if you can’t reliably take payments, issue refunds or connect to your accounting software? We’re living in an increasingly cashless society, and not being able to pay by card is likely to lead to some very frustrated customers.
This also applies to any businesses that use e-commerce or online stores. If you’re hosting your online point of sale yourself, then you need it to be backed up by reliable broadband. If your online store goes down, will your businesses suffer from the lost revenue?
Many businesses host their CCTV, intercom and other access control services on site themselves. The vast majority of these systems are now internet-based. This means they need a reliable connection to work at their best.
If your internet connection drops out, will you be able to access the feed from your CCTV, or worse will it stop recording all together? Many cameras have failovers in place, but not all. Similarly, modern access control services use the internet too. This is all impossible without a reliable connection!
How do you manage your customer data? Managing customer relationships is crucial to providing a great service, and that requires having information to hand. At RHM we’ve seen how valuable it can be to integrate your CRM with the rest of your business IT and communications, but you need a strong connection to back it up.
If your business is affected by an outage then CRM data is one of the first essential services at risk. You need to ensure that your data is easily accessible and protected in the case of an outage.
This one is a fairly obvious downside of your broadband going down, but many businesses now offer a guest network for their visitors to use while on-site. This exchange allows you to receive valuable customer insights, while they get access to your Wi-Fi. It’s a win-win, but can cause issues if your network goes down.
Ensuring your team and your customers can reliably access the internet has to be a bare minimum standard for any business. At RHM we can help you make it happen.
You need a network that comfortably supports your business now, and can be upgraded if the need arises. For most businesses right now that means using a fibre network or a leased line. Fibre either runs to your local cabinet (FTTC) or all the way to your business (FTTP). FTTP especially provides incredibly fast speeds that can support your business for years to come. Leased lines are even more powerful, providing a matched upload and download speed that can be scaled depending on your needs.
It’s also crucial that your business has resources in place if something does go wrong. At RHM we can help you implement a disaster recovery policy, which ensures in the event of an outage your data won’t be lost and your most important services will be accessible again quickly.
Get in touch with RHM to find out more about these services. Our team can provide a free consultation and survey of your site. This ensures you get a connectivity service that actually fits the needs of your team now and moving forward.
© rhm telecommunications 2024
