Connectivity is no longer just a communications matter, more than ever it is the essential infrastructure that improves worker productivity, drives customer satisfaction and enables organisations to take advantage of emerging technologies.

Good quality internet access and connectivity can allow a business to benefit from:

• Speed of activities
• Cloud application & file access
• Flexibility in how the business works
• More cost effective ways to do business

In fact, recent research published by o2 business reveals that UK businesses could gain £34.1 billion in productivity boost as a result of enhanced connectivity.

Below are just some examples of the ways your business can use connectivity to maintain competitiveness and be more responsive to customer needs.

1. Increased Resilience

For businesses to truly benefit from the above, relies on a network infrastructure that can support it. As connectivity demands grow, even small businesses are finding they have substantial bandwidth requirements, to be able to effectively provide their services.

However, ensuring your Internet connection is of the right type and quality to support your activities is not only about driving growth and revenue generation - every time your business connectivity goes down you are also risking brand damage.

This can be in the form of your hosted phone system going down and customers not being able to get in contact, or not being able to access your accounts system in the cloud. Therefore, by reviewing your current connectivity and making sure it is fit for purpose you are not only driving growth but also helping to protect both your brand and reputation.

Some key things to look at are:

• The type of service you have
• The SLA on that service
• The requirement for backup connectivity

2. Taking advantage of new technologies

One of the main reasons we see our customers investing in their connectivity is to enable them to take advantage of new technologies. Software and online services are continuing to grow and improve, from business accounting and CRM to remote management meetings and collaboration tools, meaning that a strong internet connection is essential. With even basics like social media relying on a strong network and a certain level of capacity.

That’s why it makes sense to consider your internet connection when it comes to business growth, because if your connection isn’t improving at the rate your business is growing, then you risk losing any advantage that cloud-based and internet services can provide.

3. Facilitating flexibility & remote working

The trend towards mobile workers working collaboratively together from remote locations has created a demand for being able to access data and documents from anywhere, across multiple devices.

This is where new technologies including hosted phone systems and unified communications are key, helping to tie all the communication devices in a unified manner. Your internet connection however is what will enable you to access these services by ensuring a low latency and high bandwidth connection, allowing for successful collaboration between your employees and your customers.

4. Meeting customer expectations

In today’s digital world, customers expect to be able to get in touch with your business 24/7. Providing the resources to meet this demand can be challenging but this is where digital connectivity is critical in achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction through facilitating faster response times and providing layers of redundancy within your network.

It makes sense that if your customers can’t get in touch with you via their preferred method, they will most likely turn to your competitor. A reliable internet connection can help avoid this by keeping your business constantly connected and resilient to outages.

To help support growth, it is important that businesses understand all the options that are now available in terms of connectivity. As the demand for stronger internet connections grows, providers are continuously building infrastructure and introducing new services to support this, so it’s important not to miss out.

To learn more about our Connect services click here, or to arrange a review of your current network services email sales@atlas-comms.com.