Picture the scene: it’s the weekend before most Primary and Secondary students are back-to-school (and most of their older siblings are at Electric Picnic, but that’s another story). You’re in a packed shopping centre, picking up some last-minute items and… bang, you can’t pay for them with your card because the terminals are down.
Bad scenario for the shopper, but even worse for the business owners, as thousands of Euro worth of sales are lost. And that’s literally what happened to hundreds of businesses across the country as one of the broadband networks went down on Saturday 29th August.
Businesses, especially during peak business periods, require bespoke connectivity solutions - resilient, built-for-business broadband. Or, for mission-critical businesses, zero-contention, monitored broadband with exceptional uptime that belongs exclusively to them, such as our dedicated internet access solution.
One shop manager this author spoke to described the continuity plan as follows: “Handwrite a Cash Only poster (the printer is reliant on the internet being available, so that’s out), take cash payments only and write down the card details of the regulars and hope the payments go through later. Otherwise, it’s hope the customers come back the following day”.
In a connected world where all your kit depends on internet uptime (Tills, POS, Card Terminals, Customer WiFi, and yes, your printer) – being offline during peak times is not only awkward for everyone involved but also hugely costly in terms of lost sales. Reaching a support line when an outage occurs is also key to knowing what's going on, that's why having a business-only, dedicated Irish-based support team, who aren't battling consumer calls at the same time, is vital to business continuity.
The particular shop manager I spoke to was lamenting that both their fixed line and 4G/5G failover had failed – both were with the same provider, and, as it happened, the outage took down both fixed and wireless at the same time, making the failover redundant. A case of having too many eggs in one basket.
For many businesses, broadband is still treated as a utility — something that's simply expected to be there when you arrive at work. But businesses don't just use the internet for browsing and email. Your phone system, Microsoft 365, cloud applications, CRM, payment systems, video conferencing, security systems and customer communications may all depend on the same connection.
So, when the broadband goes down, your bricks-and-mortar business effectively goes offline too. For sales and customer-facing businesses, your connectivity is directly linked to your business revenue.
An outage, even for a few hours, could mean:
- Customers can't contact your business
- Online enquiries aren't processed
- Orders can't be placed
- Card payments fail
- Online bookings stop
- Sales staff can't access CRM systems
- Customer calls can't be handled
For a business that takes €5,000 in sales during a typical working day, losing even half a day's trading could have a significant impact - considerably higher than the monthly price of your internet connection.
So, as a business owner, or the person responsible for the Tech, you need to ask yourself, “What would an hour offline cost us?”
Once you know that number, the business case for resilience becomes much easier to understand. You don't need to predict when your next broadband outage will happen. Instead, plan for what happens when it does.
At IP Telecom, our connectivity solutions and business-only broadband are designed with business continuity in mind, including options such as 5G failover, managed connectivity and Dedicated Internet Access.
And because our Connectivity Solutions are via our own built-for-business network – your business won’t be contending with people streaming the football on a Saturday afternoon. We’re strictly business only.
Because keeping your business connected isn't simply an IT consideration.
It's a business continuity decision.
Don't wait for the outage to find out. Explore IP Telecom Connectivity Solutions or contact the team today