Business transformation through full fibre

Full fibre can be a game changer for small and medium-sized businesses, driving growth, diversification and competitiveness.

Digital connectivity is no longer just relevant to business communications. It also enables smarter working using cloud computing, which can improve productivity, efficiency and customer service. According to the 2022 Cloud Computing Survey from Foundry, 72% of IT decision-makers said that their organisation is defaulting to cloud-based services when upgrading or purchasing new technical capabilities.

For big businesses, good internet connectivity is a major asset. If you run a small business, it can be totally transformative, empowering you to enhance your capabilities and expand your horizons. With increased flexibility and geographical reach, the ability to deliver world-class service in a global marketplace is no longer dependent on having a huge fund of working capital, an army of employees and extensive resources.

The power of full fibre

The planned switch-off of the old analogue telephone network in 2025 has put the spotlight on full-fibre connectivity. Most small businesses will have been relying on a hybrid of copper and fibre to deliver their internet connections. Now fibre to the premises (FTTP) is the talk of the town. It’s set to revolutionise the connectivity landscape, enabling small businesses with limited investment capital to make the most of advanced communications technology, bandwidth-hungry apps and cloud-based services.

Delivering an outstanding customer experience

In today’s super-connected world, customers expect and demand excellent service. If they don’t get it, they go elsewhere.

With full-fibre connectivity, you can significantly improve customer engagement without spending a fortune on internal infrastructure and resources. Having a faster, more resilient connectivity solution opens up the exciting world of IP Voice (VoIP) technology, also known as Hosted Communications.

With IP Voice a small business can have big-company switchboard capabilities, including advanced call handling features, such as hunt groups, auto attendant, call diversion and instant messaging. That means better customer service, leading to more repeat business and valuable recommendation. For example, a small mail order businesses selling artisan homewares can be more responsive to customer queries, avoiding negative online reviews.

It’s also no longer important where your employees are based. Calls can be efficiently routed to non-geographic numbers, mobile devices or PCs, enabling itinerant, hybrid and home-based workers to stay in touch with customers from any location with an internet connection.

Enhancing your online presence

Customers surfing the web often don’t differentiate between small and large brands. It’s the quality and usability of the website they’re visiting that matters. If it’s slow and cumbersome, they’re less likely to stay on board for the customer journey.

Better connectivity means having a more powerful, more reliable platform for your website, without investing in high-powered servers or internal network infrastructure. With more speed and higher bandwidth, you can accommodate more hits and significantly improve the visitor experience. You can also provide your customers with more user-friendly e-commerce facilities and smoother payment processing.

Having a more powerful and responsive website means you can compete successfully in a national or global marketplace. With 24/7 online availability, a small designer jewellery business can be taking and processing orders from Japan while most of the UK is asleep.

Productivity and scalability

There’s nothing more frustrating than a slow internet connection. Your employees can waste valuable time waiting for apps and web pages to boot up, large email attachments to download or upload, or software updates to install.

Time is money, which is why a fast, reliable full-fibre connection can pay dividends for small businesses. What’s more, with the increased reliability and resilience of a direct fibre connection, you’ll be at less risk of suffering costly downtime.

The other big advantage of full fibre for small businesses is scalability. With services hosted in the cloud, it’s easy to deploy new apps and increase capacity in response to demand, without having to commit to major investment. Imagine a small business selling an innovative product that gets high-profile PR coverage and a resultant surge in orders. By adding vital order processing capability, the business can avoid being a victim of its own success.

Trust the full fibre experts

At Cambridge Telecom we can help you confidently make the move to full-fibre connectivity. With so many benefits for small business productivity and growth, it makes sense to act now, rather than waiting for the PSTN switch-off. Even if you don’t have access to full-fibre yet, we’ll keep you in touch with progress of the roll-out, so you can switch as soon as possible.

Call our sales team on 01223 661636 or email enquiries@cambridgetelecom.com