To say the Internet of Things (IoT) has changed everything would be an understatement. For businesses, large and small alike, it establishes an unprecedented way to capture, process and analyze data 24/7 – except when the network fails. Regardless of the type of disruption, severe weather, heavy network congestion, or a traffic accident that has taken out cabling, the inability to communicate in real time hurts operations, sales and profitability.
Downtime has both hard (lost revenue/transactions, lost productivity, etc.) and soft costs (customer dissatisfaction, employee recovery time, etc.). Think how annoying it is for someone to walk out of a coffee shop empty-handed because a gift card can’t be processed. Just as annoying, is getting stuck with a cart of grocery items only to find out the credit card information won’t go through on the first, second or even the third try. Studies show that after less than three minutes, customers become frustrated without progress and nearly 50 percent of customers avoid a retailer or brand if they have to wait more than five minutes. Reliable network connectivity is essential to business continuity.
Of course, the cost to a business will vary depending on the size, scope and type of business one is in, and there is a way to calculate such costs. We will go into more detail on what the downtime formula includes in a later article, but in summary the calculation is:
Cost of Downtime (per hour) = Lost Revenue + Lost Productivity + Recovery Costs + Intangible Costs
Historically, whether a retailer, a financial institution or a branch office of any kind, the idea was to bring in another form of wired network as backup to the primary solution. The problem with this, besides cost, is that the cable typically comes in from the same point as the primary connection. It isn’t really a fail-safe solution for constant connectivity if that line goes down.
The best alternative is a wireless solution. Businesses previously expressed concern that cellular is too expensive or unreliable. First, the claim that wireless is too expensive doesn’t add up. Thanks to hardware and wireless carriers investing heavily in new technology and working with partners to find creative ways to bundle solutions, the cost of both equipment and data is much lower than it once was. Second, results prove that 4G LTE wireless networks are as good as, and in some cases even better than, wired connectivity. Based on the hard and soft costs noted above, choosing the cost of downtime rather than a wireless failover solution in today’s world doesn’t make for good business practice.
A wireless 4G LTE network provides a viable solution for network diversity. These are the most advanced networks in terms of performance, reliability and simplicity. Moreover, it comes at an extremely affordable price. For small and medium size businesses, this is the easiest and most cost effective solution for protection against a potential outage and downtime.
For more information, please call 760-576-6202 or visit our website at www.senslynx.com
About SensLynx - SensLynx is an all-in-one solution within the IoT & Fleet Tracking space that supplies the hardware, data service, applications and support to Value-added Resellers for their customers.