Moving into an office has its benefits and challenges, just as I recently found out.
When we moved to Wales, our three person office was squeezed into the front of our house. As well as the stock for our online shop. Things were cramped and everything had it's place. We lived out of the other front room and as is often the case in life, put up with the disruption until things improved enough to make the move to an office outside of home.
Ironically the internet connection we had at home was way faster than we then found we had in the office.
It's amazing how reliant we have become on the internet. As a group of charities and a little company, we need constant fast access, and in the move we didn't have that.
BT didn't have an immediate fibre option, but we've since found could put one in. So we ended up with a non-fibre option, which just five years ago would have been considered to be one of the best options. At 4mb's per second (actually .5mb in practice), everything was taking so long it really push me to consider whether we had made the right choice.
When you're publishing, creating video, regularly editing websites, having daily Skype calls with someone and then there can be three people in the office, all internet dependant - it didn't take long for frustration to rise.
A leased line was needed, but they cost a fortune. Upto £3,000 to install and then £3-500 a month to use. I had to do some research and calculations to even see if that was even worth considering.
A leased line is not shared with anyone where as normal internet is. So for example when we had a Virgin Vivid 350mb, that whopping claim of speed was shared between everyone connected to it on our street, so even though I paid £60 a month for the privilege, sometimes I couldn't even stream video when others in the street were trying to do the same. Virgin of course was laughing all the way to the bank, as everyone ws being charged quite high prices to not get what was advertised. OfCom the communications regulator is now forcing them to be more honest. It seems this is an issue across the industry.
So with a leased, it's you and you alone on the line. So although you book a 100mb line, it is exactly that for both download and upload.
The we had some good news. BT Openreach had a grant (government grant) which paid for the whole of the installation and I then opted for Zen internet which came in the cheapest deal per month. I needed to justify in the end spending £240 extra per month for our whole office to improve efficiency.
So think about it - if I value my time at £15 an hour and I loose 1.5 hours a day waiting for things to download, upload - disconnecting Skype calls, which take ages to get people back onto etc. That means it's 7.5 hours per week times £15 times 4.33 weeks per calendar month times two staff affected.
(((1.5 x 5) x 15) x 4.33) x 2 = £974.25
So I've been loosing £974.25 in lost efficiency every month (£11,691) - it's a no brainer to spend £240 extra to recover that loss. The leased line was installed on Thursday.
Making life productive, removing stress, save time cost - Happy Days.
