Your network is to your business as water is to a fish. It’s all around you, it nurtures you and helps you get where you’re going, and most of the time, you don’t need to think about it. But when it’s not there, you’ve got big, big problems.
How can issues with your network impact everyday businesses? Consider the retail food service industry, which is still bouncing back from the pandemic. When you think about the business issues facing restaurants, the top ones include managing rising costs, training and retaining a stable workforce, sourcing and supply chains, regulatory compliance, and competition. “Managing network connectivity and communications infrastructure” doesn’t crack the top 10.
But look closer. These days, takeout orders from online meal delivery services or over the phone can make up 40 percent or more of a restaurant’s business. If the connection to a location is down, they lose a lot of business. And diners and digital nomads expect fast and available Wi-Fi as much as they expect good service and fresh food. Get that stuff right and no one notices. Get it wrong and you can lose orders, lose customers, drop on ratings sites, or lose money from bad deals with carriers.
Customer connectivity expectations are part of their dining experience.
The problem is evaluating the best broadband options, setting up redundant connections to make sure that connectivity never goes down, and negotiating the best deals for consistent service are not how restaurant managers want or need to spend their time. That’s why a chain of casual dining restaurants with 800 locations nationwide has turned to Fusion Connect to solve this problem for them, delivering reliable, redundant, internet access and low-cost managed Wi-Fi services across all their locations and territories in one simple package.
The same is true of the healthcare providers, law firms, auto parts distributors, nonprofits and even church parishes that Fusion Connect serves. In each case, the need for good network infrastructure is so fundamental that it is easy to take for granted, especially because it is far from the core business concern of the organization. But the costs of not having the right solution at the right time can be catastrophic.
Simplifying complexity. There is no longer anything simple about communication infrastructure. Inside every business, there are all kinds of new expectations and requirements:
Each of these challenges has a range of solutions, but the solutions rarely come from the same provider. Business therefore face the additional overhead of managing multiple vendor relationships and overlapping responsibilities – a recipe for finger-pointing, frustration, unwelcome surprises, and spiraling costs.
It takes hard work to make it look easy. Outside of large enterprises, most businesses lack the resources and expertise to manage either the technology or the relationships. And frankly, even if they can afford to do it in house, it is simply not a strategic use of resources relative to other kinds of IT challenges.
That’s where Fusion Connect comes in. Managing networking technology for business is all we do, and it has been our singular focus for decades. Why does this matter?
Speed: Problems that seem novel and challenging for any given business are likely things we’ve seen dozens or hundreds of times before, and can resolve quickly.
Value: When individual businesses negotiate with service providers, they’re on their own; we bring the weight of all our relationships to the table to get the best deals and the most flexibility.
Focus: Managing hybrid technology solutions and multiple vendors is overhead with little upside for most businesses. At Fusion Connect, it is our business.
Accountability: No matter how many vendors it takes to develop and deploy a solution for our customers, your business only has one partner: us. We don’t point fingers, and we don’t make excuses. We take accountability and get it done.
From risk management to agility. Even if you don’t see communication infrastructure as strategic, the failure or underperformance of your communication infrastructure poses high business risk. From our point of view, it’s a risk that can easily be managed through the right partnership.
However, for businesses that take a longer view, having the right communication infrastructure in place can make it faster and easier to get out in front of changes to work and business in the years ahead. Consider these uncertainties:
No one knows the answers to these questions, which means far-sighted businesses need to plan for various contingencies – and that requires the agility to communicate and collaborate effectively.
We can help customers plan their communication investments with a goal of maximizing strategic flexibility, because we know the players, the technology and the roadmaps. With the right technology infrastructure in place, you don’t just get the peace of mind that your communication systems won’t let you down; you can operationalize those systems to be more competitive and profitable in an uncertain world.
Interested in hearing more? Every customer scenario is unique. That’s why we want to hear from you and begin a conversation on how we can add value into your specific organization and industry.
Fill out this short form to connect with us. We’ll do a complete our brief needs assessment survey in person or over email to see if there is a good match for our services. And watch this space for a detailed discussion of what you can expect from a relationship with Fusion Connect.
— Alex