If youre a small business you might already have an Internet connection and may be considering broadband, but you might be unclear of the actual benefits of broadband.
In this article, I hope to show some of the benefits of broadband for your business.
Lets look at some general benefits of broadband;
General Benefits of Broadband
- Always on – this means that you are permanently connected to the internet and don’t need to dial up a connection every time you want to surf the web, send email etc. Its there when you need it.
- Faster access – Broadband can be as much as 10, 20 or even up to 40 times the speed of conventional dial up connections. Other benefits include faster downloading of music, audio, video and other media.
- Dedicated connection – Broadband allows you to use your telephone and the Internet at the same time. The use of a micro-filter allows you to use a telephone or fax line.
- Flat rate – often there are no additional charges for the time you are online. You can use it as much or as little as you would like for a fixed fee, although some providers may have a download limit.
Benefits of Broadband for Business
- Can increased sales – Your business can update its website faster, respond to events, customer requests quicker with a broadband connection.
- Reduces costs – Less time is spent waiting for downloads or emails, broadband is a fixed cost so can enable better budget planning. More of your employees can be connected to broadband without it increasing your Internet cost
- Reduce travel costs – With broadband you can enable your employees to work from home (telework). There may be tax benefits available for this, talk to your accountant about teleworking and how it can help your business
- More business done online – With broadband you will move your business from using traditional methods to becoming fully electronic, which means you can utilize e-marketing, e-sales, e-delivery, e-recording, e-invoicing, e-accounting and e-purchasing.
- Increase productivity and competitiveness – Faster transfer of data files between locations, enables a faster communication to your customer or marketplace.
Broadband and other e-marketing technologies can provide quicker access to the Internet, but it can also improve your communication routes, help improve your business branding. It can help with the training of your employees and help keep your business focused upon its main goals by simply outsource your administration through the use of electronic technology.
Broadband can be expensive to set up, but the benefits for business are clear clear communication, better access, quicker access and improved sales can all be achieved faster with broadband.
Case studies
Take a look at this Personal Computer World case-study for some successful public and private sector broadband projects over the past year.