There’s no beating around the bush: we truly are living in the age of the internet. Anyone who hasn’t realised this by now is labouring under a false sense of reality. No matter what your business is, it’s likely that your staff will need to use the internet for their work. For example, public relations firms should be monitoring social media sites like Twitter, recruitment agencies could find top candidates using LinkedIn, and companies can promote themselves through Facebook.

There’s a big difference between having a good Internet connection and a great one. If your company is using a domestic broadband connection, or god forbid dial up, then you need to consider the following ways that your business will suffer.

Your employees will be wasting time: You may think the time your employees spend poking each other on Facebook and cooing at friend’s baby pictures is a waste of time, but that’s nothing compared to how long they could be spending waiting for legitimate business related sites to load if you don’t have decent business broadband. While your employees are twiddling their thumbs waiting for websites to load, they could be getting on with valuable work, like getting in touch with customers and clients. Instead they’re likely to become frustrated and distracted.

That’s even before mentioning the amount of time lost downloading files, forget about downloading any PDFs. And if you really do want your employees to stop using Facebook when they should be working, a business broadband package can provide a company-wide site block on social media websites. Sure, your staff might hate you for it now, but wait until productivity increases and they get their Christmas bonuses.

Customer complaints will go unanswered. Bad broadband connection means one thing: websites such as Twitter will take a very long time to load. This is fine for staff working in a non-customer facing role, but for your customer services and public relations teams this could spell disaster. By the time they finally log into Twitter and start addressing comments and questions from customers, someone might already be upset enough to start a trending topic: #YourCompanyIgnoresCustomers.

Your competitors will become more relevant.If your competitors have a good business broadband connection, they’re going to be able to be a lot more productive. Not only will their staff be working a lot faster, but they’ll be addressing online complaints and comments as soon as they come in. They’ll be able to use their internet connection to build engaging and interesting websites, and may even have time to be proactive about their social media marketing strategy, too.

Some of those examples may be a little extreme, but it’s worth bearing in mind that without a fast internet connection you could be left in the dust.

Sean Burke writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.