Managed WiFi for Business: 4 Things to know

Managed service is fast becoming a staple for modern companies, and with good reason: it costs less than maintaining internal staff, juggling different locations is much easier, and the solution comes with built-in scalability. As the business grows, the solution transforms and evolves along with it, without a complete refresh of your existing infrastructure. So why not extend these advantages to wireless networking systems?  

 Managed WiFi services could solve a number of common problems. Firstly, off-the-shelf wireless routers aren’t designed for highly active businesses, where multiple employees, visitors, customers, vendors, and suppliers login every day. On top of that, the average lifespan of a computing device is about 36-48 months. This means that every three years or so, the WiFi network will struggle to connect new devices, requiring a full overhaul and a fresh set of investments. Managed WiFi is a smarter alternative.

Here are four things to remember: 

Spend less, while providing uninterrupted network services. 

Enterprise-grade WiFi equipment is cost-intensive, especially when it is used improperly. Managed Services handles the challenges of scaling, custom configuring, and security management. This will help expand the business footprint, without constantly troubleshooting day-on-day network issues, even for the new offices and locations. A Managed WiFi solution will take care of licenses, compliance, and other localised requirements, that the internal IT team may not be aware of. 

 It’s always a peak productivity period, with Managed WiFi. 

There’s a saying that the best networks are almost invisible, and business WiFi needs to be just that. A managed solution will maintain the systems in the background, preempting lags, and ensuring business continuity. An amateur set up solution not only risks connectivity errors but also involves hours spent in corrective measures, inhibiting revenue generation.  Today, not being able to connect to the internet hinders critical workflows. If there are retail centres where visitors expect a connected environment, bad WiFi could also damage customer loyalty. A Managed WiFi solution will define uptime and issue resolution methods right in the SLAs.

 No one can afford to ignore emerging security threats. 

Recently, several companies have made the headlines for large-scale data breaches, putting internal processes as well as customer data at risk. Often, these leaks are easily preventable, the result of poorly setup (or in some cases, non-existent) security configurations.  

Business-grade network security requires more than simply assigning passwords and login profiles. There are a variety of configuration options that can help locate anomalies in the network, such as DDoS attacks where your systems are flooded with fraudulent traffic to bring connectivity to a standstill.  

A Managed WiFi solution shall take care of the most common threats, such as phishing, network malware, or malignant sites.

Detailed analytics can help to locate improvement areas. 

Visibility is one of the key differentiators of any managed solution, whether it’s managed IT, security, or WiFi. The key is required to deliver up-to-date reports on network resources and key performance indicators (KPI), allowing you to take timely decisions.  Managed solutions come with an online portal to monitor the performance in real-time. This will help better understand which business applications and user groups consume the most bandwidth, and what could be done differently. It could actually help to remove inefficiencies and to ensure the spends are optimised every month and maximise the resources available. 

Hence, a Managed WiFi  solution should address the four key elements: costs, productivity, security, and visibility