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Why Poor Wi-Fi Is One of the Biggest Risks for Organizations

Poor Wi-Fi connectivity and lack of visibility can cost a company a lot in lost productivity. Learn how wireless network monitoring solutions help ensure consistent connections by closing the network visibility gap.

7Signal 48.1.4

Companies today face many different risks to profitability, from downtime to safety issues to supply chain bottlenecks.

But on a daily basis, organizations face another hazard that greatly impacts productivity and business success: poor Wi-Fi. Enterprises now depend on maintaining strong connections to conduct business, including sales, delivering software as a service, billing, virtual communication, and much more.

When the Wi-Fi isn't working, and you aren't sure why, there's a serious gap in knowledge at play, and resolutions can take longer and cost more money. This guide walks through why the network visibility gap is so harmful to organizations and how they can address it.

What is the network visibility gap?

When something goes wrong with the Wi-Fi or a wireless endpoint, users complain, and network managers attempt to uncover what's going on so the problem can get resolved as soon as possible. But without the right insights that reveal specific issues, there is a significant network visibility gap. 

Often, this stems from only having default, limited WLAN monitoring tools that merely assess the network infrastructure, not how connections are experienced by end-users. Essentially, network managers don’t have any visibility between access points (APs) and the devices connecting to them. Only 7SIGNAL’s wireless network monitoring solutions close this AP-to-device gap and provide the detail to accurately define a range of underlying issues.

Inaccurate assessments and solutions contribute to a substantial loss in productivity, which impacts the bottom line. For example, the average American employee wastes up to 22 minutes every day dealing with tech issues at work. This equals two weeks of work in one year, simply spent trying to resolve IT problems. Other common Wi-Fi problems, like dropped VoIP calls or slow upload times, create even bigger losses for companies, with some even imperiling sales or customer relationships. 

When Wi-Fi isn't working correctly, it's a big hit to a modern business. But by closing the visibility gap and seeing things from the end-user perspective, companies can increase their IT efficiency and maintain a productive workforce.

How to close the network visibility gap

Again, fundamentally, network managers must be able to see how a network is performing from the end-user perspective and identify problems and solutions quickly. Effective wireless network monitoring tools provide this visibility, identifying otherwise ‘hidden’ issues like roaming problems, device congestion, interference, improper AP placement or configuration, application-specific challenges, and others. 

7SIGNAL’s wireless network monitoring solutions assess these elements and more — over 600 KPIs — while observing trends, creating reports, and identifying network design and upgrade strategies to optimize performance. Most importantly, continuously monitoring the network helps IT staff uncover the root causes of any problems, enabling durable solutions that avoid recurring issues.

The global market intelligence firm IDC conducted research that revealed excellent ROI and other outstanding results for companies that installed 7SIGNAL’s platforms. According to IDC’s research, the average three-year ROI using Mobile Eye is 670%, which also resulted in 33% more efficient networking troubleshooting and 59% reduced times to troubleshoot problems.

Other results revealed in the research:

  • An annual average value of $1.16 million per organization
  • 57% reduction in total staff time to resolve each issue
  • 36% increase in network management team efficiency
  • 43% decrease in unplanned, network-related downtime
  • 22% faster ability to receive reports of new locations and end-users added to the network

Another significant result: the average company gained over 3,000 hours back in end-user productivity per year.

As one 7SIGNAL customer said, using Mobile Eye "helped improve the reliability of the wireless network. We can zero in on issues more quickly and come up with solutions quicker. We can also validate usage of other tools and the data we get from those tools, which improves our overall trust that we properly understand what's going on."

7SIGNAL’s Sapphire Eye® also achieves proven results in improving Wi-Fi performance. IDC research found that using this onsite platform reduces troubleshooting time and delivers essential insights that help companies assess Wi-Fi coverage effectiveness. It increases visibility about how problems arise, informs network design and upgrade strategies, and can reduce infrastructure costs.

To find out what 7SIGNAL’s monitoring solutions can do for your business, start this ROI assessment that calculates the organizational impacts. You can also contact the 7SIGNAL team today to learn more.

7SIGNAL® is the leader in wireless experience monitoring, providing insight into wireless networks and control over Wi-Fi performance so businesses and organizations can thrive. Our cloud-based wireless network monitoring platform continually tests and measures Wi-Fi performance at the edges of the network, enabling fast solutions to digital experience issues and stronger connections for mission-critical users, devices, and applications. Learn more at www.7signal.com.