1. Customer experience
Customer experience is a key factor in purchasing decisions with just under three quarters of consumers (73%) saying it influences their spending choices. Studies show that 86% of buyers will pay more for a better experience.
Those slow tills, faulty loyalty apps or poor mobile signal might seem like small frustrations, but they could actually be driving customers away.
In fact, one third of customers will leave after a single bad experience.
Businesses are frequently turning to loyalty apps as a way of retaining customers and offering personalised products and services tailored to their needs. It not only offers a cost-effective marketing tool but also provides valuable data on customer behaviour.
The apps are only as useful as the connectivity powering them with poor signal preventing full functionality and just becoming another issue for customers to contend with.
2. Productivity
Reliance on connectivity for trading and operational activities has increased among businesses in the last five years. The cost of missed sales, lost productivity and other disruptions due to downtime has also risen by 400%.
More than 50 million hours of work time is lost each year due to internet failures and lost working, costing £3.7 billion in the UK.
Rebooting the system and work arounds are not without cost implications.
It leaves staff unable to work and customers struggling to buy.
It isn’t just your internet that can cause you problems either. Poor indoor mobile signal is common among modern buildings due to the materials and structural components. This leaves staff and customers having to go outside to make calls.
3. Health and Safety
Poor connectivity doesn’t just affect profit it can also leave businesses vulnerable to health and safety risks.
Companies rely on technology to support their systems. Unreliable service means from lifts to shop floors when poor signal hits employees can struggle to call for help when needed.
The HSE recently added guidance for lone workers to encourage employers to implement robust communication methods for ensuring workers can stay in contact and summon help if needed.
Mobile signal dead spots, intermittent failures and poor connectivity all pose a risk to the safety of lone workers and could result in hefty fines for employers.
Poor signal might not seem a big issue, but the problem only becomes apparent when it is needed and not there. Leaving connectivity to chance can have devastating consequences.
4. Competitiveness in the market
Technology is moving fast across all industries with 94% of organisations adopting greater technological solutions. From the digitalisation of retail spaces to more automated warehouses and construction sites, companies are increasing productivity, capability and efficiency through advanced AI and robotic systems.
What all these technologies have in common is the need for connectivity to power their use with 58% of companies still facing weekly disruptions due to flaws in their legacy systems.
Latency delays, overloaded networks and failing network devices all slow down how technology operates. You can have the cleverest tech in the business but without the connectivity to back it up you will fail to unlock its true potential.
5. Security threats
Increased digitalisation brings increased risk of cyber threats. Strong, reliable cybersecurity is imperative to keep operations working.
This means understanding the interconnectivity of devices and where weaknesses in systems make the network most vulnerable. Private 5G and the increased capabilities of newer connectivity solutions help to reduce the risk of cyber threats and build added security avenues.
It also allows security systems like CCTV to be separated within the network to prevent overloading and compromising delivery.
6. Operational demands
Gone are the days of manual warehousing. Operations are much more digitalised with robotics and AI tech helping to streamline efficiencies in everything from picking to packing and inventory.
Driverless carts transport packaging across the site with robotic machines programmed to locate and pick orders.
Even construction sites demand greater autonomous tech with self-driving machinery and AI powered tools or drones delivering greater efficiencies.
Workplaces are changing and with that is a need to embrace resilient, robust networks that can handle the increased demands.
7. Sales potential
Three quarters of customers expect personalised experiences which is why businesses are turning to more advanced marketing techniques. The retail sector is personalising the shopping experience with loyalty apps. These can then create bespoke offers which track customer spend and encourage new revenue opportunities by personalising advertising.
These marketing tools rely on customers being able to access them and the connectivity being in place to keep up with growing demand.
Dynamic pricing is also hitting our shelves allowing retailers to increase prices depending on demand or market changes. Electronic shelving labels connect to remote systems that allow pricing to be changed instantly.
Next Steps
Technology is only as good as the connectivity system in place to power it.
As the world continues to embrace more advanced tech across all sectors the need for faster, more reliable systems only grows.
Legacy systems weren’t built to provide the resilience currently being demanded and now struggle to deliver the speed and reliability needed for the multitude of competing applications.
If you are ready to explore how you can futureproof your connectivity, then our team is here to help. We can help you create a system that not only provides the most efficient solution for now but can grow with increasing demands in the future.
To explore what those next steps for you might be, please either book in your free consultancy call or we are running free Indoor Connectivity Audits to highlight where the biggest issues might be in your building.
