Small- to medium-sized businesses may lack the resources and IT expertise to manage, protect, and upgrade their networks effectively compared to larger, more enterprise-level companies. While growing organizations face several network challenges due to limited budgets and smaller team sizes, they can work with a managed network services provider to overcome them.
Small to medium-sized companies often face several network obstacles that can stand in the way of their operational success, including:
Unlike enterprises, small- and medium-sized companies often lack the spending power to make necessary network hardware upgrades and performance improvements. With limited budgets, companies may opt to use legacy equipment and existing network structures, negatively affecting their bottom line and operational efficiency. While increasing funding for network-related upgrades and maintenance may not be an option for smaller businesses, they can leverage a more cost-effective network to reduce operating costs and free up revenue for other business-critical aspects of their business.
Read More: Top Strategies to Reduce Network Cost
Internet speed can have a direct impact on worker productivity and business success. Employees that experience sluggish web page load times and data transfers waste time better spent on other projects. Strong network connections help ensure employees can complete their tasks as planned, with less interruption or delay.
Read More: 4 Recommendations For Improving Business Internet Speed
Smaller organizations may face challenges with maxing out their bandwidth, especially if they leverage shared networks to cut costs. Growing businesses may limit their ability to scale if there are too many users and too much network traffic at the same time. Companies can prevent dips in network throughput and reliability by upgrading their infrastructure to better support their development.
Read More: 4 Tips to Maximize Internet Bandwidth
Small- and medium-sized companies often lack the internal team members and expertise to effectively monitor and upgrade their IT stack, including their network infrastructure. For many smaller organizations, employees wear several hats. For example, an IT person may also handle the company’s bookkeeping, limiting what they can accomplish with only so many hours in a day. A managed services provider can help take that responsibility off internal teams so they can work on more important business objectives. .
According to Gartner, every second of downtime is expensive for any company, costing an average of $5,600 per minute. Looking past the financial cost, employees losing access to their data and tools due to outages are less productive and may be unable to continue their work until the network goes back online. Companies using a solution that prioritizes network reliability, such as a setup that meets or exceeds the “five nines” of availability at 99.999% uptime, can guarantee their network operates with a maximum downtime of a few minutes each year.
Read More: 3 Internet Solutions to Improve Network Uptime
Network security is a concern for virtually every company type in every industry. For smaller organizations, the ability to protect themselves is more limited than larger businesses with firewalls and hardware that adds additional layers of protection. Organizations handling sensitive information can leverage secure network solutions designed to ensure data protection in transit.
A managed network services provider can be an invaluable partner for growing companies looking to offload network maintenance tasks, better defend themselves from security threats, and upgrade their infrastructure to support business growth.
A managed provider handles the IT infrastructure for their customers, taking care of necessary hardware upgrades and proactively monitoring the network for security threats. By working with a provider, companies experience shorter installation timeframes, allowing them to scale easier and increase performance quickly. In addition, they guide customers to find their ideal network solution and customize their offerings to ensure they receive the cost-effectiveness, performance, capacity, and protections they require.
Are you a small- or medium-sized company looking to overcome specific network challenges? Download our overview to learn what network solutions are best suited to address your unique needs.
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