For office-based professionals, the past few months have been tumultuous to say the least. Virtually every office worker has had to up sticks and relocate to their home. Thus started an extended period of pyjama-bottomed Zoom meetings that few of us could ever have envisaged becoming the norm.
One of the main issues posed by remote working, however, was that which surrounded network problems and internet connectivity. Not every professional would have as quick or as stable an internet connection as they needed to carry out their professional tasks, and the benefits of a proper office setup quickly became apparent.
For many digital-based firms, working from home was only the start of their nightmare. Now, however, as many firms make their first tentative steps back into the office, you’d expect those issues to become a thing of the past, right? Well, not necessarily. There remains something of a mismatch in today’s world; businesses are becoming increasingly digitally-based, however their infrastructure isn’t correspondingly reliable. The impacts of this, as we’ll go into, can be significant. The team here at Impress Solutions, a Romford-based firm offering IT network infrastructure services, wanted to look at just why reliability is so important, when it comes to your office’s network support.
1. Get Back Online Quickly (Or Have Contingency in Place, if You Can’t)
There are few worse things for a digital business than when your internet goes down. Downtime is one of the most dreaded phrases out there. You come in one morning to find that you can’t connect, and suddenly your whole team is blindsided, left twiddling their thumbs. It’s frustrating, but more importantly for a business, it’s costly. The longer an office’s internet is down, the more money it costs them.
In fact, according to a report by Beaming, back in 2017, 73% of micro-businesses (2-9 people), 75% of small businesses (10-49 people) and 83% of medium businesses (50-249 people) said they’d been affected by downtime. For those small businesses, the cost per productive hour lost was a not-insignificant £227. That’s why it’s so imperative that your network provider is able to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Your network provider should also be able to implement some form of contingency, should there be an internet outage. Whilst obviously not ideal, having something like a dongle, or an alternative router in place can enable your team to continue working whilst the main network issue is addressed. That way, you can mitigate any major financial haemorrhaging.
2. Connectivity Extends Beyond the Internet…
There’s much more to a solid office network setup than simply the strength and speed of your internet connection. You want your IT network infrastructure to help facilitate business growth, rather than constrain it in any way. If, as a small business, you suddenly find that you’re in a position to recruit, for example, then you want to know that that new team employee can quickly be integrated into your team, from an IT perspective. This may mean setting up an additional, new email account, for instance. Having this done efficiently and as a priority ensures your firm doesn’t have to break stride as it moves forward.
Alternatively, in an era where nothing is more valuable to a business than data, your business may find itself needing additional storage. A good networking firm should be able to implement additional storage and backup capabilities within an office, or reconfigure your existing backup/storage so that it’s more optimally set up.
3. Flexibility and Evolution is Critical
The IT network infrastructure that best served your office a decade ago, may not be what best serves it now. The rate at which technology advances means software and hardware can become outdated very quickly. Your firm too may have changed, and the requirements demanded from your IT may change, correspondingly. The need for connectivity and flexibility within many modern offices, for example, may necessitate transitioning from a wired network setup to a wireless alternative for greater flexibility.
Similarly, if you’ve got any legacy systems in place, this could be greatly hindering your progress as a firm, and it’s worth getting in touch with a firm such as ours, to update or replace them as is seen fit.
4. Trust
The importance of this point cannot be overstated. As a company reliant on IT, if you’re constantly second-guessing your office’s IT setup, then you’re never going to be able to work as optimally as you would if you had complete confidence in it. By utilising a trusted IT solutions firm, you can a) rest assured that nine times out of ten, nothing will go wrong, and b) if something does go wrong, you know it’s going to be appropriately dealt with.
The importance of network support cannot be overstated, both in terms of internet networks, and more general network architecture. So, if you’d like to find out more about our IT network infrastructure services, then get in touch! Contact our Impress Solutions and our Romford-based team today on 01708 759 760.
