Is Internet Access More Important than Office Location?
Office location is as important today as it ever was, although not always in the same way to every business. A business which relies on footfall through the doors will always favour ‘high street’ type locations, however office environments will prefer good transport links, easy parking, security of the site etc.
However, a recent study compiled by WiredScore, which surveyed 450 office workers found that 78% of respondents ranked access to reliable internet connection as the most important factor when selecting office space for doing business.
The study concluded: “Reliable connectivity is the #1 most important influencing factor for workers in selecting office space, ahead of transportation, location, amenities, views and environmental sustainability.”
This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, since most businesses now rely heavily on the internet to generate business to some degree (email, websites, social media, online stores) and many have moved to Voice Over Internet Protocol phone systems (several of our tenants already run VOIP telephones via our installed broadband), which are extremely cost effective compared against traditional telecoms systems, but require high speed and most importantly, reliable, internet access.
WiredScore understands the importance of corporate connectivity as they provide certification for commercial office properties based on their standard of Internet connectivity and rates them accordingly. With that in mind, these are the some of the other results from their survey:
- 97% of office workers and office location decision-makers surveyed consider high-speed, reliable internet connectivity a critical factor in choosing their office space.
- Office workers consider reliable connectivity “critical” to doing business by a more than 2 to 1 margin over office location decision makers, 78% to 31%
- Connectivity outages and slowness disrupt business at least once a month on average, and more than twice a week for 1 in 4 respondents.
- More than half of office workers (61%) admit they stop working and waste time when the internet goes down.
It is safe to say that currently, reliable connection to the internet is vital in business today, as even the smallest business will require some form of connection if only to access emails or their online banking. To quote WiredScore:
“We live in a digital age. It’s no longer enough for a property owner to simply provide an internet connection for its tenants. Commercial tenants have ever-growing connectivity needs, and if a building doesn’t meet their standards, they’ll go somewhere else.”
Fortunately, Prospect Business Park can meet the demands for most businesses, large and small, looking for office space in the Durham area;
- Fast, reliable and most importantly FREE access to the internet
- The most competitively priced office space in County Durham
- excellent links to the major transport routes in the area
- a variety of sizes of offices to suit all requirements
- lots of free parking space
- easy terms
If you are looking for office space in the Durham area, please don’t hesitate to give us a call and make an appointment to view our newly refurbished offices and workshops. All of our contact details can be found on our Contact Page.
If you would like to read more from WiredScore, they can be found here www.wiredscore.com
