Back in 2009 when I began with 2 Circles, the country was bouncing back from a worldwide financial crisis and the priority for the majority of businesses I spoke to was: ‘Save money, cut costs’.

Helping businesses drive down their monthly telecom spend was the priority, and the cost of investing in new technology, along with the complete lack of affordable fast broadband products, meant looking at anything else except ‘cutting costs’ was lost both on the customer and I.

Fast forward to 2017 and, although the Brexit bombshell may be stifling some businesses, on the whole things look much more rosy and with such a dramatic change in the telecoms landscape, the priorities for business have changed considerably. Yes, businesses are always keen to cut costs, but with the improvements in internet connectivity and reliability, the areas where these cost savings are being realised have typically been below the surface.  I have written previous posts about the value of a high-quality, guaranteed broadband service and the power of our cloud-managed Meraki firewall devices but in some cases the true value of these services is often overlooked as the price of the investment is looked at in isolation.

Decisions are quite often made without factoring in the other areas you would see a cost saving such as the reduced IT support contracts required, as well as the savings cloud-based solutions offer over the existing cumbersome and energy-heavy onsite servers – not to mention replacement costs when they go bang.  When looking at these solutions, businesses tend to seek the advice of their IT support providers and the vast majority we work with see the value of these added benefits and work with us to bring them into place.  There are still a few 'turkeys' out there who rely on their 'hours' IT support contract and server hardware sales for their revenue, and they are certainly not voting for Christmas.

Having a secure, reliable, monitored broadband connection brings a whole host of benefits to businesses.  A government report earlier this year identified that for those that used the £3,000 voucher to upgrade to a Superfast connection, one in four firms employed an extra full time member of staff and each made an average of £1,300 more profit per annum through being more efficient and effective, so if your IT support company is advising otherwise then its likely they need stuffing!

Making this sound investment means a more productive and secure workforce, and the days of a significant time-cost of staff not able to work, due to the broadband going down, are a thing of the past too.

Yes, better broadband and cloud managed services do cost more than your ‘off the shelf’ broadband products, and arranging a private fibre connection does need 'deeper pockets' however it’s time to flip the iceberg and ensure that the hidden costs of NOT having a guaranteed and monitored connection are a thing of the past.