How Businesses Use the Internet

In today’s age, the Internet has become something like a utility rather than an amenity. Industries of every stripe use the Internet to perform several tasks related to their business processes. Many businesses rely upon the Internet to run their business. Large businesses worldwide use an average of 129 software applications, according to Okta. Small firms use about 50. Many of those applications reside off-premise, either at a data center or from a provider like Salesforce, ADP or Microsoft.

Ponder how businesses operate today. Point of sale systems from Square or Shopify that take your credit card and provide a receipt are Internet-connected. Zoom and Microsoft are household names. Email and websites are commonplace but are rarely run by the business itself. Practice management software, databases, CRM, ERP, payroll, scheduling, fleet tracking and marketing (like Hubspot and Mailchimp) are usually run today by a vendor.

Without online connectivity, most businesses would not be able to run at all. At the very least, eCommerce and credit card transactions stop when the Internet is unavailable. Financial institutions like banks and insurance companies cannot apply, quote or look up information without access to databases and other systems.

Most businesses take the Internet for granted, like water and electricity. Yet the Internet does have outages.

Downtime is costly. The lack of productivity by employees who cannot access information and apps is one thing, but the inability to transact sales is a larger problem. Have you calculated what an Internet outage would cost your business?

*** Look at this case study to see what we’re talking about in more detail. ***

The ways businesses use the internet today is different. You can find businesses using the internet to achieve various operations and tasks.

Ways Businesses Use the Internet

There are some general purposes that any industry can use the internet for.

One of the most common ways in which companies use the internet is to conduct Commerce – buying and selling. The internet makes it easy for you to sell virtually anything, whether it’s a virtual or physical good. eBay, Shopify, Etsy and other platforms have made it easy for any business to buy and sell goods. There are even websites – Guru, Upwork, Thumbtack, Care, HireMyMom, and more – that allow you to offer your services for hire.

Going online to buy and sell is only the starting point. There are several other ways in which businesses use the internet.

Here are some other ways companies use the internet:

Competitive Research
Analyze Audience Behaviors
Advertise Products or Services
Media Hosting
Brand Identity Building
Processing Customer Accounts
And more!

As you can see, much of these tasks are geared towards promotional efforts, yet others are geared towards the logistics and function of the business as a whole. Exactly how your business uses the internet depends on a broad set of factors.

Companies who notice drops in productivity or efficiency commonly go online to enhance their efficiency. Suppose your company is struggling with simple tasks like appointment setting or inventory management. There is a software application that can improve that function.

*** Look at this article about some of the ways businesses use the internet for their advantage. ***

As you can see, businesses use the internet for a wide range of different purposes. If your business isn’t leveraging software to improve business operations, efficiency and productivity, you should look into it. Therefore, there are virtually no limits to what you can get done by using a high-quality network for your business needs.

Login Business provides a high-quality network to run your business. If your business needs five 9’s – 99.999% uptime – Login Business can design and implement a network with redundancy and resiliency for your business. (By the way, 99.99% uptime is about 1 hour of downtime per year. With “five nines” of availability, you can expect less than five and a half minutes of downtime each year.)

Contact Login today for more details.