When your idea takes off, make sure you have everything in place to allow your business to reap the rewards. That means that even if you’re small, you need to be thinking about how your technology and other business processes can scale. You want these tools to support you in your growth, not serve as a speed bump along the way. In this article, we’ll look at the tools and technology you can scale so that growing your business is easy.
Scalable WiFi That Grows With You
While the basics of WiFi remain the same, it’s far trickier to make sure you have the equipment and know-how necessary to scale your network alongside your business while remaining fast, reliable, and secure. The key is to set up a solid infrastructure that allows you to add or swap out equipment without having to reconfigure the whole thing.
Ideally, your architecture is scalable, so that it’s easy to add users while delivering the same quality connection. Getting something that works day-in and day-out saves your staff vital time they’d otherwise spend on troubleshooting.
If you deal with customers at your location, you must offer free WiFi; it’s that simple. However, that means your network can hit some substantial bumps if you experience a boost in popularity and get new business coming your way. Make sure your broadband connection can support growth, providing everyone the bandwidth they need.
These WiFi networking challenges become a lot easier if you work with your ISP to implement the technology and maintain it. They can help you strike the right balance between network architecture and connection speed to meet your users’ needs both today and tomorrow. With managed WiFi support, your staff is free to focus on making your business better, instead of restarting the router and hoping that’ll fix the problem.
Scalable Managed IT Services
If your company is growing fast, you might not have the time or the expertise to handle your growing IT needs. A managed services provider (MSP), however, does.
Managed IT services give you the resources of a large company’s IT department for a small business price. They can address day-to-day IT issues, protect your network and assets from threats, maintain and monitor your system, and help you plan for future technological needs. You don’t need to go on a hiring binge or worry about switching up your approach as you get bigger—the MSP is already set up to do that seamlessly.
If you’re growing rapidly, it’s easy to fall into a reactive IT approach where you add servers and other equipment piecemeal to fix the problem as quickly as possible. The issue with this approach is that, as you grow, what worked in the past can create problems in the present.
Make sure you’re working with someone who has experience setting things up to be scalable, and not making it up as they go along. By bringing on a managed services provider, you free your employees up to focus on their core business priorities while leaving your IT in the capable hands of your provider—often at a much lower cost than maintaining an in-house IT team.
Take Advantage of Simple Cloud Tools to Hire Remote Workers
When we talk about the cloud, most people’s minds go to complex infrastructure, SaaS, and more. While these are certainly useful to think about, it’s also worth considering the little things that the cloud can do for you. It’s easier than ever to get a remote worker to handle simple or repetitive tasks, like pulling together a list of leads, or bring on a virtual assistant to help organize your busy schedule.
Keeping essential assets like brand art or future content in the cloud means that adding staff as you grow is as simple as sharing a link. A password sharing service like LastPass or CommonKey gives your remote worker access to your social media to make posts for you and manage the account, or any number of web-based services to get things done.
Make Sure Your Phone System Is Ready for Growth
Business phone systems have changed more than you think in the last 10 years, and a key piece of technology behind that change is cloud-based VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). VoIP phone systems give you the ability to route and reroute calls to your entire staff—whether they’re in the office, on the road, or working remotely—using a single system. It simplifies the process so that a caller is connected straightaway instead of waiting on hold.
VoIP pulls this off by using your existing data lines to send audio over the internet. Since you’ve already got your broadband set up, there’s no equipment to install or lines to run. Scaling is as simple as requesting additional virtual connections or getting a boost in bandwidth from your provider. Working with your ISP, you can implement a 21st-century phone system that has room to grow when you do.
What You Can Do Right Now
If you don’t set up your technology to be scalable, you’ll run into big problems down the road. With a little foresight, you can be sure that your technology is ready to grow with your business.
- Build your WiFi for growth, and consider getting help from your ISP to deal with the specifics.
- Look to Managed IT services to provide scalable IT support.
- Take advantage of how the cloud enables you to get extra help from remote workers when you need it.
- Make sure that your phone system is ready for growth with VoIP.
- Contact Cox Business
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