The only way for a business to stay in the market over a longer period of time is to constantly work on its growth. Only a couple of decades ago, this required a lot of financial investment, as growing internationally presented different types of costs for a business. The main problem that showed up was connectivity.
Luckily, as technology has evolved, being able to communicate was the first challenge that was tackled, and connectivity has allowed businesses to work together as a seamless unit, despite the fact that people working together can be thousands of miles away from each other.
Even though this has allowed businesses to grow more easily without facing huge expenses, not all of the service providers are equally secure and stable. Additionally, as an increasing number of businesses are relying on technology, the quality of service has become very important, as any problems with the preset network can result in a huge financial loss.
Let’s take a look at how important of a role uptime plays, and why investing in a better service provider will bring better results.
Communication
The reliability of communication is of great importance for every business. Imagine a business comprised of several teams throughout different geographical locations. As the teams are working on a project together, having a communication channel open at all times is necessary for progress. Without it, any problem they come across would take a lot of time to solve, as correspondence channels such as email are not exactly the fastest and most efficient ways to communicate.
This is why many businesses use VoIP service providers with secure networks that are always online and specially made for business purposes. As communication is important now more than ever, using a provider that ensures maximal uptime is necessary for maximal productivity. A provider with an unstable network can lead to slower productivity.
Beside the in-house business communication, many businesses employ this technology in marketing and customer support purposes. This is another business process in which a stable VoIP network is necessary for offering the best service possible.
Company workflow
Even though there are plenty of public software tools useful for business globally, setting up one in-house is a choice many go with due to security reasons. Private networks provide businesses with complete privacy and security that ensures all of the crucial data remains in the business’s ownership.
However, picking the right provider for setting up intranet is a task not to be taken lightly. Uptime also plays an important role in setting up a system like this, as it can greatly impede a company’s performance. Here are a few examples that showcase the importance of intranet uptime:
- Collaboration – Teams working together require continuous intranet uptime, as plenty of processes are worked on in unison. There are plenty of scenarios in which this type of approach significantly speeds up time needed for project accomplishment.Collaboration is a necessity in the business world of today, and working on an unstable system can negatively impact the overall productivity.
- Document sharing – Businesses have an abundance of documentation that should be accessible to all the employees at all times. Whereas documentation is not always needed, there are times when it is crucial for speeding up a project. This is why a cloud system should be on a intranet that is stable and always up and running.On the other hand, there is always new information that should be added to the centralised knowledge base, or documentation that employees want to send to each other. All this makes it necessary for the system to always be working, as any downtime will impede workflow, increasing the time needed for project accomplishment.
- A stable knowledge base – Knowledge base tools are ways of keeping the business efficient, effective and more productive. Hosting such a software tool on an intranet requires speed, reliability and security. Also, this type of tool can be used for different purposes such as project management, which heavily relies on a system’s stability.With a stable system, a knowledge base can grow to become a very important part of a company that should always be accessible to higher management and employees. This is where bad uptime can make the system less effective.
These are only some of the examples of how important the uptime of an intranet is. A company should work on a system that is always online. The importance can be compared to that of a bridge. As long it is standing everything is fine, but in case it collapses, you will immediately experience a loss.
To make sure that your intranet’s uptime is impressive, make sure to work with businesses that have plenty of experience with this type of service.
Financial loss
Why does it all matter? Well, all of the problems that might occur with unstable technology comes down to financial loss. Imagine heavily relying on a VoIP or data system that goes offline every week for one hour, when it matters the most. It makes it impossible for wide range of employees to finish their tasks and move on to others. While this might not be tragical for a small business, the higher it scales, the more damage is being done.
Look at this from another perspective, you are paying an employee, no matter if the communication or data system is working or not. If the system is down, productivity drops, as employees cannot finish their tasks and you, as the business owner, are wasting money every single minute the system is down.
When you have two employees, this might not be a serious issue, but what if you have 200 employees? A single minute of downtime turns into hours of wasted money. To avoid these losses from happening, it is a better solution to work with service providers that guarantee high network uptime.
If you are thinking about creating a business datacenter infrastructure, VoIP system or intranet, one of the first things you should think about is the uptime. Do your research well and always work with a service provider that successfully delivers a high system uptime.