There isn’t much in today’s digital workplace that doesn’t rely on Internet connectivity. If you were to take stock of all your critical business operations that require connectivity to run, it will give you nightmares to think about what would happen if they were to all shut down. This, unfortunately, was just the reality for many people and businesses who experienced a 19-hour service outage at one of Canada’s biggest telecom operators. The impact of this recent outage was felt by more than 10 million customers and affected Internet access, cell phone, and landline phone connections across Canada, and had some fairly serious consequences as a result.

911 services were inaccessible on many mobile phones, hospitals and banking services were disrupted and many businesses were unable to accept debit transactions for payment. With services shut down, companies were losing money for every second their customers couldn’t reach their web services, and productivity suffered when employees couldn’t access the web applications they rely on to get their jobs done.

The system failure, in this case, was due to a maintenance update, but there are many potential reasons for an Internet connection to drop. These reasons can range from equipment failures, faults on the line, human error, natural disasters, and cyberattacks. Although different Internet types have varying degrees of reliability, no connections are guaranteed, and therefore businesses need to be mindful of the impact an outage can have.

The impact of Internet downtime on your business

Loss of productivity: When the Internet goes down employees are unable to perform their jobs as they normally do. They are unable to read or respond to emails, load and transfer files, send attachments, customer and company data may be inaccessible, and in some cases, they are unable to use their phone, particularly if you are using VoIP.

Decrease in morale: When a company’s network shuts down it impedes employees’ ability to work, which demotivates them because they feel like they are not performing their job effectively.

Customer service: Customers have high expectations when they interact and engage with your business. They have come to expect lightning-fast service, including fast page loads and almost immediate customer service responses. Clients will get frustrated, especially if they can’t connect to your site or get the customer service they need. A delay in responsiveness could ultimately move your customer to a competitor resulting in a loss of potential revenue.

Brand reputation: Let’s also not forget the impact of customer perception. When customers have a bad customer experience, be it no response, dropped voice calls, or slow or unavailable transactions they are likely not going to buy from your business again, and even worse they may tell others not to do business with you.

Financial loss: Internet outages or disruption always result in a financial loss from missed sales and reduced output from your team. Depending on your business, revenue loss will fluctuate but according to a past Gartner study, the average cost of IT downtime to a business is $5,600 per minute. That on its own is a significant impact on your business, now imagine the impact if you were shut down for an entire day.

In the event that a network outage happens, organizations must plan for and implement network failovers to ensure they have protection, resiliency, and redundancy in place to prevent downtime. Fortunately, there are backup solutions available to help should any of these outages ever occur.

How to prevent downtime in your business

The key to preventing downtime is having a backup plan. When issues occur, you want to be able to switch to a reliable backup or redundant system.

To ensure network connectivity, providers like Execulink offer redundant Internet solutions to help maximize speed and reliability and offer a network connection if your primary Internet goes down. Hybrid Bonded Internet and LTE Backup can enhance your connection and give you peace of mind.

LTE Backup

Having an LTE Backup solution is an excellent choice to maintain your network to avoid interruptions. It’s a hardware solution that can get you back up and running seamlessly. Execulink’s LTE Backup solution uses a cellular gateway coupled with a SIM card to provide an alternate method of access to the Internet using Mobile networks. The failover kicks in when your primary connection goes down so that you never have to worry about downtime again. It’s perfect for businesses that require 24/7 Internet to function and it will keep your devices connected.

Hybrid Bonded Internet

Whether your business needs consistent uptime, better quality bandwidth, or confidence in your overnight backup, Hybrid Bonding can make those needs a reality! Hybrid Bonding utilizes services such as DSL, Cable, Wireless, Fibre, or even Mobile Data and bonds multiple lines into a single managed access. Whether it’s Fibre with Cable, multiple DSL lines, or a combination of all of the above; the bonding hardware brings together these services to provide a high quality, single-IP, redundant solution for your business.

Hybrid Bonded Internet gives you the power to mix-and-match service providers to create a resilient, fully-dependable, single-IP network.  If one service goes down, no wait-time for failover is required as the bonded appliance dynamically manages your data over working connections as you continue on with business as usual.

You’ll never miss that overnight backup again – plus since no system reconfiguration is required to accommodate single service outages, productivity in the office will remain consistent.

Internet outages are often unpredictable, but having backup solutions in place will minimize the business impact and keep your employees productive and your business profitable. To learn more about backup Internet solutions for your business call us at 1-877-561-6771 today or contact sales@execulinktelecom.ca.

Learn more about Execulinks Internet backup solutions today!