How often do you think about how your internet connection impacts your business revenue? It seems like a silly question. Revenue and internet are two entirely different things. If anything, an internet connection is just a business cost that needs to be minimised, like energy bills and other utilities. Or is it? The internet is much, much more than just a utility. It’s the infrastructure your business runs on. Not to be dramatic, but the wrong kind of internet can ruin your business in all sorts of unexpected (and expensive) ways.
And all of them directly hit your bottom line. We’re talking:
Now that I've clubbed together the biggest risks to revenue into four neat buckets, let’s go through them one by one and see how your choice of internet connection affects each of them.
Loss of productivity – the silent killer of business output
Even a single interruption is one too many when you’re dealing with a distributed workforce of any size.
Temporary loss of productivity is a strange phenomenon because, while it may appear minor on the surface, it has a cumulative effect and can spiral out of control if it becomes a regular part of your working day.
According to Gartner, a business loses around AUD$7,850 per minute when their internet is down – and that was in 2014, so we can only imagine the cost now. (Gartner has a cool formula to calculate the cost of network downtime in your business, definitely worth playing around with.)
The lost productivity can be traced back to interruptions. Some people can launch into a task at a moment's notice, but it’s more than likely your team will start something slowly then gain momentum once they’re really into whatever they’re doing. The net drops out, the momentum is lost, and they need to start over.
Multiply that loss of momentum and loss of productivity across everyone in your business, and you don’t have to be Gartner to see it adds up to a bigger problem.
Loss of data - Your cloud is only as good as your connection
It's easy to have a false sense of security with the cloud these days, because it's dependable, secure and 'always there'. But the cloud is utterly useless if you can't get at it. The key to the cloud is a stable, fast, reliable internet connection. And the more digitally-enabled your business is, the bigger the dependency on uninterrupted connectivity. Many startups, for example, basically run their entire business on cloud platforms and data centres. What if you’re an eCommerce or fintech startup? Losing the ability to take orders or process payments, even for a few hours, can be a massive pain, and even hurt your credibility as a company.
The client or customer might sympathise once or twice, but if it keeps happening, they’ll simply move on (possibly leaving you a few unkind reviews before they go).
Loss of time – frustrated employees and lost productivity
Here's a simple equation (but one that's always worth emphasising): loss of productivity plus loss of data leads to loss of time.
You've got your eye on the clock every time your business internet connection goes down. You’re losing minutes, hours and possibly even days where nothing’s happening. And you’re falling behind on deadlines and targets.
A Computer Weekly report during the Pandemic said UK home workers were losing up to half-an-hour per day – not from social media distractions; because their home internet connections couldn’t keep up with their work demands. 84% said their internet was unreliable, and 86% complained about slow speeds.
A quick calculation: that means each employee was losing 2.5 hours per week, or 10 hours per month, or 120 hours per year. Apply that equation across your entire workforce, and you can see that we're getting into some serious numbers.
Revenue – your internet could be eating away at it
Loss of time points, loss of productivity points, loss of data points… What do all these points add up to? Lost revenue. Left unchecked, that eventually adds up to the loss of the business itself.
This is a very real outcome of a bad business internet decision – your business could grind to a halt and even go under. The question then becomes: how much revenue are you willing to risk on an untested internet connection? Due diligence isn’t the most enjoyable task, but it pays (literally) to thoroughly research your business connection needs and vet your providers before staking your business operations on it.
In a nutshell
It pays to have a timely reminder (like this one) that a good business internet plan is not something you're just lucky to have – it needs to be planned for and sought out. The stakes can be high if it's not put in place at the right time.
Don’t take on any more risks than you have to. Get properly connected so you can concentrate on running your business, and then go be the winner you are.
