As a culture, businesses are relying more and more on the internet.
Today, businesses must have a secure and dependable internet connection in order to operate on a daily basis. Strong and dependable broadband is essential for any business, whether it is a little café, a bustling chain of pharmacies, or a huge corporation, and this is especially true in a post-pandemic environment.
Have you given any thought to how your business would function in the event of an internet outage? Given the dependence on operational infrastructures such as emails, VoIP phones, file management and POS systems, as well as CRM and team collaboration tools.
This article discusses the effects of a lost internet connection on your business and the preventative needed – Failover Broadband.
Internet Outages – The True Business Cost
Regardless of the type of broadband connection your business has, internet outages do occur. It is unavoidable to experience a loss of connection at some time, whether as a result of a natural disaster, a power outage, a cyberattack, or routine network maintenance.
When this occurs, it may be bad for business.
Such knock-on effects include:
Lost Revenue
Business revenue will suffer immediately if your network is down and payments and orders cannot be filled. Every minute of downtime costs extra money since time equals money.
Problems Synchronising Data
Nowadays, the majority of firms use cloud computing or at least a hybrid form. These frequently integrated multi-system apps rely largely on the internet and will not sync if there is a disruption.
This may cause operations to entirely or partially fail, which could lead to the loss of work and data, compromise business continuity, and make recovery more difficult.
Develops into Communication Issues
One of the most important aspects of running your business is keeping in touch with your customers and staff. A network outage can cause communications to break down. In turn, this may negatively affect customer service delivery and cooperation across teams or divisions of the business.
Customer Inconvenience
Customers are savvy in this busy environment and know what they want and when they want it. You run the risk of losing those customers, along with your well-deserved reputation, if a network outage bothers them in any way or if they have a bad experience.
Displays a Lack of Professionalism
Customers and staff may perceive a lack of professionalism in a business during downtime.
Customers want firms to have a backup plan in place in case something goes wrong, which demonstrates sound management and fosters confidence. Hence, they may become concerned if there is no backup plan in place.
From a staff’s perspective, network problems hinder their capacity to do their duties effectively. This could result in a lack of trust in the business and a greater attrition rate.
Heightened Threat of Cyberattack
Businesses that are not prepared may go into a panicked frenzy if their internet connection is lost. Many people in this situation may seek the quickest solution, which could involve connecting to an unprotected public WiFi network, for example. Employees may also decide to connect using their personal networks or devices to resume operations.
However, choosing one of these options, even if only temporarily, can expose the business to the risk of a cyber-attack or data breach. This can end up costing your business more in the long term than a period of outage.
Reputational Damage
As was already established, one of the most important effects of an unplanned outage is reputational harm. If you don’t plan, you plan to fail, as the proverb goes.
You are failing the people who depend on you by neglecting to prepare for any scenario that could have a negative impact on your business and your customers. If they cannot trust you to solve their problem, they will find someone else who can.
Word can travel quickly about a badly run and untrustworthy firm in an age where dissatisfied customers can use social media or online review services.
Reputations can be built over many years and destroyed in a matter of seconds.
The good news is that there is an effective solution that ensures this does not happen, a Failover Broadband Connection.
What is Failover Broadband?
While broadband outages are inevitable, businesses can take the required precautions to make sure they have a backup plan in place. This is something that is a no-brainer for businesses operating today.
Failover broadband is a backup network or secondary source of internet connection that may be enabled and used in the event that the original source goes down.
An independent secondary failover link will automatically take over as the primary internet connection in the event of an interruption or loss of connection, preventing any downtime.
Interested to know more about failover broadband? Speak to a Fastcom expert today and connect your business to high-speed internet. Dedicated fibre connectivity with symmetrical speeds up to 10Gb and 1 Day SLA.