Why reliable broadband is essential for your business

In recent years we have learned just how dependent we are on technology and how it affects our day-to-day work lives. From the retail worker at a till to a farmer keeping track of his livestock, every industry needs broadband to keep their business running as smoothly as possible. More and more businesses have moved online as they adopt and embrace hybrid work, or even fully remote work. This is why having a stable connection is important.

95% of people who regularly work from home consider home broadband to be important, says the Connectivity Survey from the Commission for the Communications Regulation (ComReg), which highlights the need for broadband services.

Read on to hear from two Irish businesses how a reliable broadband connection helped their business thrive.

Connect with your audience

Being able to connect with your customers and suppliers through reliable broadband helps build those lasting relationships with your business. You are able to give respond to customer queries, give faster access to orders, and dispatch orders quicker when you have a fast network connection.

Kerry-based Rosemary O’Connor set up her business Killarney Organic in 2017 and shares that it was the arrival of reliable high-speed broadband to her area that helped her internet-based beauty business to be born.

Using her website killarneyorganic.ie and her social media channels, Rosemary is able to spread the world across Ireland about her face and beauty products. Vodafone Business Broadband is what powers her connection to reach customers nationwide, all from her home in Killarney.

“I couldn’t run the business without it,” Rosemary said. “My entire business is run off my laptop and it’s important to me that I have a reliable and fast connection that is always on and always ready to go. I take my orders in, print off my labels and dispatch items to all parts of the world.”

Rosemary says her office technology makes her business viable in a way that’s hard to imagine without it.

“Throughout the pandemic, the brand has continued to grow unless you hit the audiences. I couldn’t really exist without our website, and it’s only been up for around a year, and already it’s performing strongly for us. It’s a whole business that has grown, basically, online.”

Bringing people together

Social media is a crucial factor to help build success for a business. Social media channels allow businesses to reach out to a wider audience, to help establish and maintain connections. By having a reliable broadband connection, businesses are able to efficiently grow and enhance their social media.

One person who knows this better than anyone is Lily MacMonagle from Kerry. She set up her full-time performance academy for kids, the MACademy (themacademy.ie) in September 2021.

Lily had dreamed of opening her own performing arts school, and she knew to make it a success that technology would play a key part.

“We needed to be able to connect with parents to be able to get kids in the door,” Lily explained. “For that reason, our website and social channels are crucially important as well as for staying in touch with parents after they’d enrol their children.

“We needed to have solid broadband, backed up by Vodafone’s mobile network. For example, as parents can’t come and see a show, we put together three-minute edited videos that keep the parents involved. We use broadcast lists and internet messaging to push these out. The parents love them, and the kids love seeing themselves perform.”

All the administration is done from just a laptop and a smartphone. Lily updates the school website, shares posts to social media, and manages broadcast all through the internet.

"When we’re not actually teaching classes, we’re conducting a digital business."

Always connected

Hearing from these businesses highlights why a strong, reliable broadband connection is important to all businesses, and why breaks in the service can hinder them. But what can be done if the broadband fails or is interrupted?

This is where Vodafone Super WiFi comes in. It targets blackspots in your workspace – be it working from home or in a traditional office setting – and so enables businesses to maximise the benefit of their broadband from every corner without connectivity issues.

Having a reliable broadband connection is more important than ever as we depend on WiFi more and more. Vodafone Super WiFi means customers can set up their offices anywhere, even in place they couldn’t get coverage in before.

It is possible that some situations, such as adverse weather conditions, construction errors, or damage to overhead lines, may cause a broadband connection to go down. When you have a business, this break in connectivity means a break in productivity.

To avoid a disruption to your work, have in place a safety net such as Vodafone’s Always Connected technology. It switches your broadband modem connections to the Vodafone 4G mobile network the second the broadband connection goes down. Once resolved, the network will switch back to your standard broadband connection. This all happens in the background, so you can continue on running the business without losing time during the workday.

Having a reliable broadband connection can help businesses become more flexible not only for customers but for staff and supplier needs as well, allowing the business team to be as productive and responsive as possible.

Learn more about Vodafone's superfast, reliable broadband for businesses.