The ‘new normal’ is more than a buzzword – it’s truly a new reality that many companies, even now, are struggling to grapple with and adapt.
Social distancing measures brought about by governments globally to manage the impact of COVID-19 have made a profound impact digitalizing the way people work. At the policy level, Singapore, for example, highlighted how the pandemic has crystallized its imperative and opportunity for digitalization, while Indonesia has said that COVID-19 has forced it to accelerate its digital transformation.
At the operational level, demand for remote working and flexible work arrangements have surged tremendously. In May, over 80% of the white-collared workforce in Singapore were working from home. Tech giants like Google, Facebook and Microsoft had announced they were extending their work-from-home policy to 2021.
Even hawkers and markets, which have been slow to adopt digitalization because of a traditional preference for physical interaction, have adopted digital platforms to make food deliveries, and been urged to adopt e-payments.
This has raised a spotlight on the critical role of networking solutions that ensure everyone is connected digitally. For every employee working remotely, every consumer ordering food delivery, and every hawker accepting payments, the network is fundamental to connecting people and addressing their needs.
How your business needs are changing
These structural shifts are changing your needs as a business. With digitalization forming a fundamental part of every business, organisations are becoming more exposed to network traffic fluctuations that can impact overall customer and employee experience.
Here are three common scenarios that may face your business:
- With segregated teams, your employees depend more heavily on your network for bandwidth-heavy applications when they are video conferencing for their daily catchups, but how long will this arrangement last and do you have the flexibility to amend your network requirements when needs change?
- As physical events and meet ups are discouraged, webinars are becoming increasingly popular. A happy problem would be a larger than expected turn out digitally, but can your network scale to accommodate the excess traffic?
- As you start to digitalize your operations, you see sudden surges in user traffic periodically across your ecommerce channels. Can your network handle these spikes in real-time without disrupting the consumer journey and risk losing you the deal?
This volatility in network traffic due to growing digitalization demands your network be agile and flexible enough to:
- Scale up during peak traffic periods and ensure a smooth digital experience for your customers and employees, and
- Scale down during lulls to minimize total costs of operations while still ensuring optimum performance.
Furthermore, your network must be resilient enough and equipped with sufficient redundancy to ensure uninterrupted service to your users. Reliable connectivity is both critical for productivity (e.g. your smart robots need to be constantly connected to function), and essential to customer retention (e.g. the last thing you want is to lose a customer because they were logged out of your digital platform due to a disruption in connection).
Unintended downtime that results in business disruption is a costly mistake in terms of operations and reputation that all businesses must avoid.
This is why it is important for companies to invest in a robust and reliable network service provider. However many businesses still need to sign up for long-term fixed bandwidths with their service providers which hinders them from reacting swiftly to their changing network connectivity needs. They frequently pay for more headroom, causing under-utilization of their network, and incur additional costs that could have otherwise been used to bring value to other areas of the business. They also expose their networks to the vulnerability of disruptions on shared infrastructure used across the incumbent telcos.
Why choose SPTel?
Our customers benefit from lower total cost of ownership with our scalable bandwidth and flexible contract plans. They also enjoy improved operational efficiency on Singapore’s alternate fibre backbone, with diverse and physically separate pathways from the incumbents.
SCALABLE BANDWIDTH PLANS: Customers benefit from the flexibility to scale up and down their bandwidth as needed to lower wastage caused by excess network capacity. This helps their companies be agile when responding to changing business needs, while lowering their cost of ownership and expenditures. With SPTel, they are also not tied down with any long-term, fixed contracts, and can adapt at any time to changing business demands.
NETWORK RESILIENCE: Customers benefit from SPTel’s unique fiber pathways, which combine a physically separate network core from other providers with dual exchanges as a standard for all our connected buildings. These protect the network and lower the risk of unexpected service disruptions caused by third-party activities, minimizing operational downtime and ensure your network stays up and running smoothly at all times.
IMPROVED PERFORMANCE: Customers are also guaranteed an ultra-low latency with SPTel’s 2-tier network structure which lowers the number of hops needed for data to travel for a more responsive network. This helps improve performance and user experience of the applications deployed by companies, especially those that require efficient real-time responses.
SECURE AND RELIABLE CONNECTIVITY: Customers are protected with secure connectivity with our 24/7 Integrated Operations Centre (IOC) for network monitoring, and Security Operations Centre (SOC) capabilities supported by ST Engineering. This is critical for businesses today when cyberattacks are increasingly commonplace, and the authorities and public are placing greater emphasis on data privacy and protection than ever before.
Are you ready to find out more about how to super-charge your business in this ‘new normal’? Contact us for more information, or drop us an email if you have any questions.
