Most entrepreneurs spend weeks weighing their options for accounting software or project management tools and then take five minutes to decide on their internet provider and network setup. It makes no sense. The critical technology decisions—the ones that everything else operates on top of—should be given at least as much attention as the discretionary options for the day-to-day functionality of small to medium businesses.
Why? Because when you choose the wrong project management software, you can choose another one in six months. Annoying? Of course. But it’s possible. However, when the internet infrastructure that you’ve set up isn’t working for your team, it requires contracts and installation times and disruption that affects every single person in your office. It’s higher stakes.
The Bottom Layer That’s Often Ignored
Think about how you operate your business. Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool is in the cloud; your phone is probably VoIP; file-sharing requires Google Docs or other platforms; video calls occur all day long, every day; your point-of-sale system needs an internet connection to process payments, report to headquarters, and stock inventory.
All of it rests on top of your internet connection. If that foundational block does not work properly, then nothing else is going to work properly either. There’s no use having cutting-edge software if it’s being developed and not using it to its maximum potential thanks to dropped connections during important client calls or lagging screens because everyone is tapping into resources at the same time.
Companies often start with a basic broadband plan and, at least for a time, it works relatively fine. Then the company grows; the reliance on cloud services exponentially increases; video calls go from check-ins to daily occurrences; and what was once a connection that seemed sufficient presents problems that no one saw coming.
When Consumer Solutions Don’t Work Anymore
The biggest problem with consumer-level internet—even the business packages made for residential providers—is that they’re built around different priorities. They work fine for sending emails and checking sports scores. They’re not reliable when you need consistent upload speeds for video conferencing, guaranteed support for uptime when relying on a cloud application every moment of every day, or representatives willing to help after business hours.
This is why going with an actual internet provider for business makes all the difference. Commercial-grade access is all based on uptime guarantees and symmetric speeds (uploads equal downloads) with support teams who understand that business functioning cannot stop to troubleshoot a minor issue.
Support Doesn’t Matter Until It Matters
Software decisions get plenty of attention—and rightly so. Deciding if your team will go with Hubspot or Zoho as a CRM platform changes how resources are allocated and how productivity can be improved; deciding to use Microsoft Teams as a communication tool means integration across the board for many people who might otherwise prefer an email game plan. Getting software decisions right facilitates changes for productivity based on immediate needs.
But no software can compensate for infrastructure that has been poorly built from the ground up. Most businesses rely heavily on cloud-based services, for example. While it makes them collaborative and allows for employees to work from home easily, with all files in one place, they require heavy reliance on an internet connection. If that connection falters? The wrong call has been made at the very beginning of the line.
The same goes for communication tools—video conferencing software might be great, but it needs bandwidth—and not just download speed equity—but upload speed as well, especially if one plans to provide graphics and presentations to audiences from inside their home office.
The Ripple Effect No One Expects
Tech decisions cause ripple effects that may otherwise go unnoticed in the beginning. When you get your team software that they love and feel comfortable using, they work faster and more productively. Improved collaboration leads to reduced time to get things done, which creates positive ripple effects throughout the office.
When your internet cannot accommodate everyone at once, however, people learn how to adapt around it—they come in earlier to upload files before others arrive; they don’t turn cameras on because they don’t want anyone hogging up bandwidth; they stop using cloud shares because they’ve essentially had to regress into emailing attachments for anyone to read anything at all. While this doesn’t seem that bad in the short run, it creates tremendous efficiency loss over time.
Creating infrastructure decisions based on perceived need is dangerous; building anticipated usefulness into whatever project is in store is important not only for present success but also future growth. If you see your company expanding into new branches or needing to hire more people who will be operating in remote locations down the line, resources will need to accommodate better connections than what’s feasible today. This does not mean over-buying for years down the line until excess capabilities can be rendered today—but working with trusted providers who have the infrastructure built to support any desired growth without stripping out what’s already there due to faultiness helps down the line.
Support Never Really Gets Considered
If and when something breaks—because eventually something always does—who’s going to fix it? Residential options rarely present tech support free of charge—with phone calls getting you someone who restarts your router unless you’re lucky; business-grade options often provide their own dedicated support teams, rapid response times or service-level agreements that ensure timelines for resolution.
This matters when it’s critical—and while it may not matter at all when issues are few and far between—but when your internet goes down mid-PowerPoint presentation or seconds before a deadline due via cloud storage, trusted options with priority release truly impacts your bottom line negatively if they aren’t accounted for.
Making Better Technology Decisions
The technology decisions that drive business performance aren’t always the most glamorous—sometimes they’re the critical foundational options that allow everything else to operate seamlessly (or not). A solid connectivity foundation; sufficient hardware; software that actually makes sense according to your workflow—these investments justify themselves when observed yearly for their consistent success and demand from operating organizations.
But challenging themselves to tackle decisions like this with as much informative comfort as software purchases is essential early in the process—and research means truly understanding what they are buying into beyond superficial marketing materials. Finding out about scalability and support depth when things inevitably go wrong, for businesses to become successful, it’s important that their systems make sense and connect instead of work arbitrarily for what’s better down the line.
