High-speed
business internet:
What speed does
your business need?

Access to high-speed business internet can be the difference between superior and poor customer service and between high or low staff productivity. It can therefore be the differentiator between maintaining a competitive edge or not. This is especially true today, as companies accommodate more remote working, more online client meetings, and more cloud use.

Accordingly, selecting the right internet speed and service for your SMB is often a top priority for managers and IT leaders. But it can be time-consuming and confusing to fully understand your firm's operational needs and determine what level of business internet speed is required. Start by considering how faster internet speeds can enhance your operations.

The business world is constantly changing. Companies‘ communication with their customers and clients continually evolves with new disruptors, devices, and technologies entering the market. There's only one steadfast principle—that those interactions are almost always online.

Therefore, as standard, companies are expected to have a strong, engaging online presence and communicate with their customers in any way they desire. It can be challenging for SMBs to keep up with, but with business high speed internet access, your business will find it easier to adapt and quickly adopt new tools to meet your customers' needs. For example, in retail, omnichannel customer service is fast becoming the norm. This approach relies heavily on centralized cloud-based systems, which require high-speed business internet to work seamlessly.

Fast internet with adequate bandwidth, which refers to the amount of data that can be moved per second, is also the backbone for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telecommunication tools, such as unified communications. These are essential tools for client meetings and need adequate internet speeds to prevent embarrassing dropouts or poor quality experiences. Achieving seamless unified communications can demonstrate the efficiency and quality of your business's operations to your clients. Furthermore, videoconferencing and calling can save your company time and money by reducing the need for staff travel, making it well worth the investment.

Overall, high-speed business internet access can allow staff to process queries and requests quicker, through whichever channel they arrive, and reduce the risk of bottlenecks, delays, crashes, and losing customers because staff can't respond as quickly as competitors. The higher the volume of activity, the more your business will benefit from faster speeds and broader bandwidth.

Employee productivity also benefits from the ability to respond to client queries and meeting requests without disruption. But high-speed business internet can improve staff productivity in other ways, too.

Today, employees use more online tools than ever before. According to Okta Inc., the number of software apps that firms of all sizes across industries worldwide deploy hit an average of 88 in 2021, increasing by 22% over the past four years. In the technology industry, the average number of apps rose to 155 in 2021. These figures will no doubt be higher post-pandemic and continue to grow over time.

These tools become increasingly resource-intensive as more staff use them. Therefore, high business internet speed is needed for optimal use and to ensure shared content is updated seamlessly in real-time, so colleagues aren't accessing incomplete or outdated drafts. The quicker and more smoothly staff can communicate and collaborate—particularly when remote working has increased—the more productive they can be.

Whether staff is using a host of collaborative tools or not, most employees' work will inevitably be online. Therefore, investing in high-speed business internet with fast upload speeds and download speeds can allow them to complete those tasks more efficiently and help improve the quality of video conferences. Most collaborative tools are now cloud-based, and uploading large files is more and more a necessity. Time is money, as the adage goes, and productivity is the holy grail. As such, not supporting staff with adequate business internet speed could give your business a competitive disadvantage, whereas access to high-speed internet does the opposite while increasing job satisfaction for staff.

Processing speed relates to how many tasks your network can handle at a single time. For growing SMBs, internet connection and network performance need to keep up with the expansion of your business so that you can support more users and processes happening at the same time. This is also important if your business expands its technology portfolio and uses more advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Additionally, high-speed business internet can determine how quickly your firm can process data. For businesses, data is like a new currency. Companies are increasingly collecting and processing growing swathes of data to gain business insights to achieve a competitive advantage, use AI to automate processes, or report environmental, social, and governance information. This data often needs to be shared between departments and employees and customers and business partners.

Faster processing speeds and broader bandwidth for both uploading and downloading can reduce delays in data sharing, improving productivity across systems and interactions.