How Slow Internet Speeds Can Impact Your Bottom Line

As organizations grow and continue to leverage cloud services, the need for fast and reliable internet connectivity is imperative.

Articles published June 2, 2017 by Bob Bally

Imagine if you purchased a car with a turbo-charged engine and the maximum speed limit on the interstate was changed to 45 mph. In the business world, this is comparable to having a fancy new cloud-based software system without the horsepower to connect and use it efficiently.

As organizations grow and continue to leverage cloud services, the need for fast and reliable internet connectivity is imperative.

Your organization can have the best software in the world, but if it’s not accessed and used remotely (quickly and efficiently), then it may never produce the desired results. In addition, if these applications are dependent on the connection, then uptime will be critical to productivity. Outages or slowness can impact your ability to serve your customers or make new sales, and ultimately, negatively impact your bottom line.

Tips to Fix the Problem

How do we fix this problem? Beginning with a proper network assessment is a necessary first step when considering cloud migrations. Often businesses will do proof of concept testing to understand bandwidth needs and application efficiency. Remote connections (such as home workers) and remote office connections should also be analyzed. Of course, it’s important to factor in all the costs as well.

Costs

Here are five variables to consider related to cost:

The number of employees who access the internet.
The average number of times your employees access the internet per hour.
The average internet return time (the time it takes for data to get from one point to another, called latency).
The average 8-hour work day for 20 days a month.
The cost per employee (average salary, including benefits).

Location

When analyzing your current applications in the cloud, it’s important to understand how the applications are connected to the internet. Depending on the services, you may need to consider a more direct connection to the cloud/hosting provider to improve your speed. Or consider changing your internet service provider (ISP) to one with a more direct path to the cloud application, which will boost your response times and connectivity, without the expense of the direct connection to the cloud provider.

Most major cloud application providers have the option for direct connections to them, however they call them by different names.

What if?

It’s also beneficial to plan for the “what if” scenario, and consider these questions: What if your primary internet line has an outage? What is your back up plan? Could your staff work efficiently from home using a more consumer-grade internet service? Could you benefit from a backup cellular connection? Could you benefit from a backup wired connection, and does your existing network infrastructure support this?

Network Assessment

Another option is to reach out to an internet provider to assist you with the proper analysis and cost comparisons. You can also do individual speed tests by using sites, such as www.speedtest.net. It’s important to do this with different users at different times throughout the day.

Monetary Impact

As you think about internet speeds and reliability, also consider how much one hour of downtime would cost your organization. Break it down to see the monetary value, productivity, sales opportunities, and customer service interactions that are lost when your network is down. Take into account some of the more intangible factors, such as reduced client satisfaction and employee morale, and consider the impact to your bottom line.

Ultimately, it’s critical to have the bandwidth, reliability, and speed to meet your organization’s needs today and tomorrow.