What constitute an organized cabling infrastructure? That may be a question every small and medium business owner ask themselves when renovating, relocating, or simply expanding or repairing services. “Yes”, having an office that looks great is important and it motivates everyone to work more effeciently but that’s not the only reason why you shouldn’t have wires dangling in every corner or on the floor.
Cabling mess desmotivates
cabling mess
A cabling mess can lead to employees tripping over wires that is for power or data cabling. This is a more serious matter that needs the attention of any business owner and business operation manager. Safety aside, a messy cabling infrastructure leads to lost time. That is because if you don’t have your jacks labelled and cables in order then you will have a hard time finding where exactly each wire is terminated leading to waste time finding whether the issue is with your provider or your inside cabling.
mess cable tripping
If you see a sharp rise in number of complaints related to your connectivity whether it’s for voice (telecommunications, paging, intercom, security) or data (internet, media connections, Lan network) then it is most likely due to bad cabling. Knowing your cabling infrastructure or having a blueprint of your data network always helps. A good technician provides you with a map of your cables and tells you to run a few extra cables for a rainy day. If you had to drop a jack for each and every new employee you hired you will be spending an awful amount of your operations budgets trying to keep up with technology costs if you are a fast-paced growing company.
But why would cables go bad? Cables and wiring inside walls or outside can be rendered useless like any other item over time. Corrosion, cable cut or cable bent or some of the main reasons where cables are not good anymore. Sometimes data cables do not work at optimum condition due to interferences from other devices or lights. So, if you have recently installed some new electric wiring it could effect your data network. It’s very important to consult a cabling expert when you are making changes to your office wiring infrastructure. Loose cables at either ends or points of terminations are another reason why you might be out of internet in the middle of a busy business day. Mice or other rodents who have found pleasure in chewing cables also damage a lot of cables that are not protected in proper conduits.
Having a properly marked jack and communication room helps you in short and long term. Usually in a small or medium business there are no dedicated IT personnel. One or two of the employees also wear the IT hat and troubleshoot occasional problems. Well, what if you are not in for a day and you face some internet or cabling issue? You would have to yell in the phone and think how slow your employee is who can not find a modem, a router, or a jack to connect his/her computer. Well, problem is that not everyone is tech savvy despite all the advances in technology it is not easier today than it was 20 years ago when it comes to connecting to internet or sharing files. So, if all of your cables are labeled and marked properly it is much easier and less time consuming to tell your helper to test the network by plugging into such and such jack to find out where the problem is originating from.
As a business owner or operations manager you should focus on what you do best whether it is sales, managing your employees, or tackling customer issues and technology should be your slave to command. This can only happen when you keep a professionally installed network in place. A good network and cabling infrastructure allows for cost effective and quick expansion of office, and cubicles.
As a last note, and as one of the most important reasons why you should have a quality cabling infrastructure in place is security concerns. In this day and age, data is THE MOST important asset of any business. Simply look at the sheer amount of digital receipts, e-mails, digital phone calls, and communication between you and your customers to realize this. So, when your cabling is exposed to outside world or when it is easy for any outsider or neigh bore to plug into your cabling infrastructure you are really inviting disaster. Over the course of our work, we have see way too many loose cables around that can be used by anyone to eavesdrop on your network data. Studies have shown that only less than 20% of business use encryption when it comes to communications and that means you should have at least a sealed and secured cabling infrastructure in place which should in itself safeguard you against a great deal of eavesdropping attacks.