Modern businesses require resilient wireless networks to keep pace with evolving work models and fluctuating office attendance. Wireless site surveys are key to designing infrastructures that are not only robust and reliable but also tailored to meet today’s variable connectivity demands for efficient and seamless operations.

The Growing Need for Wireless Site Surveys

Dynamic workplaces, evolving office layouts and flexible workforce models are driving the need for adaptable wireless networks. These networks are essential to prevent bottlenecks and connectivity issues that can disrupt operations. Consider a scenario where a conference room is located at the far end of the office, away from the nearest access point. Attendees in this room might face persistent video conferencing issues, such as lag or disconnections, due to the signal weakening as it travels across the space.

Comprehensive site surveys are essential for designing a robust network. Site surveys pinpoint issues like signal loss over distance, physical obstructions, and device interference to create a network that is resilient and energy-efficient. By considering these factors, the network remains flexible to spatial layouts and varying user numbers, ensuring high performance and energy savings. This approach is key to providing cost-effective, unified communication, essential for uninterrupted client interaction and optimal productivity.

What is a Wireless Site Survey?

A wireless site survey is a critical step for designing and maintaining a wireless network. It involves a detailed examination to map out coverage, identify interferences, and optimally place access points. To achieve this, surveys come in three distinct types, each tailored to meet specific aspects of network planning and performance.

Source: The Missing Link

Passive Surveys:

• • Focus on evaluating signal strength and detecting interference within the existing network setup.
  • Aim to pinpoint areas that require improvements to enhance connectivity.

Active Surveys:

• • Test the network’s performance by simulating real-world data transmission.
  • Help fine-tune the network to ensure a seamless user experience.

Predictive Surveys:

• • Use advanced simulations based on floor plans to anticipate network behaviour.
  • Inform future network expansions and adjustments for growing connectivity needs.

With the detailed insights collected from passive, active, and predictive surveys, the next challenge is to interpret this data to drive strategic decisions. This is the stage at which heat maps prove their importance.

Source: The Missing Link

A heat map from a Wireless Site Survey, showing the areas of strong (in green) and weak (in red) signal strength within a network.

Heat maps are instrumental in visually representing network coverage, using colour gradients to easily identify signal strengths and weaknesses – green for strong and red for weaker zones. At-a-glance insight into network performance is essential for strategic planning. It guides the placement of wireless access points to guarantee robust signal coverage across the office. By providing a snapshot of potential coverage issues, heat maps facilitate uninterrupted productivity and effective communication, which are essential for modern business operations.

The Benefits of Conducting a Wireless Site Survey

Conducting a Wireless Site Survey is a strategic step that offers numerous benefits for any business looking to optimise its wireless network. Here are some key advantages:

Source: The Missing Link

• Improved Network Performance: A detailed survey secures reliable network coverage for smoother workflows.
• Cost Efficiency: A site survey prevents overspending by ensuring you only invest in necessary network equipment.
• Enhanced Security: A site surveys pinpoint and fortify network vulnerabilities to prevent unauthorised access.
• Scalability: A wireless site survey facilitates network expansion in line with business growth.

When to Consider a Wireless Site Survey

Optimising your wireless network is crucial and Wireless Site Survey is a foundational step in that process. It’s especially important in certain circumstances to ensure your network’s reliability and scalability. Below are some scenarios where a Wireless Site Survey should be considered:

• • Before moving to a new office: To tailor your network infrastructure to the new office layout, ensuring seamless integration from day one.
  • After an office redesign or significant layout changes: To verify that your updated office design still benefits from optimal network coverage.
  • When experiencing consistent connectivity issues: To identify and solve persistent network problems, improving overall connectivity.
  • Planning for growth: To future-proof your network, preparing it to support an expanding number of devices and users with minimal disruption.

How to Prepare for a Wireless Site Survey

Preparing for a Wireless Site Survey involves several key steps to ensure that the resulting network meets both current and future demands. Here’s how to get started:

Source: The Missing Link

1. 1. Assess Networking Needs: Evaluate current and future network usage, device types, applications, and data traffic.
2. 2. Floor Plan Preparation: Create or update a floor plan showing workstations, meeting rooms, and common areas for network planning.
3. 3. Identify Obstacles: Note locations of potential signal obstructions such as concrete walls, metal filing cabinets or elevators that could affect wireless signal.
4. 4. Device Consideration: Consider all types of devices that will connect to the network, including laptops, smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices, to ensure compatibility and optimal performance.

By thoroughly preparing for a wireless site survey, you can facilitate a more accurate and effective assessment, leading to a wireless network that is robust, secure, and capable of efficiently supporting your business operations.

Planning for Wireless Network Success

A well-planned and robust wireless network is the backbone of business innovation and growth. Investing in a comprehensive Wireless Site Survey is more than a technical checkup; it’s a strategic move toward a future where your business operations are uninterrupted, secure, and scalable.

Ready to transform your organisation’s connectivity? Take the definitive step toward a seamless wireless experience – book your Wireless Site Survey today.

The post Beyond Connectivity: How Wireless Site Surveys Enhance Tomorrow’s Business Network appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

New fraud prevention practices are also being introduced, such as Confirmation of Payee, and potential disruptions raised by Russian sanctions must now be incorporated into any push towards improving cross-border payments. Such challenging circumstances paradoxically make planning for the future both more difficult and necessary.

To keep up with all this change, both in circumstances and customer demands, it is clear that banks and FIs will have to swiftly embrace the latest technological solutions. Such a digital transformation will inevitably involve replacing legacy systems and optimising connectivity to global payment networks. There has never been a more critical time to reimagine the role of technology in the sector, as doing so could be the deciding factor in remaining competitive and compliant.

Vitus Rotzer, the Chief Revenue Officer for  Financial Messaging at Bottomline, is sceptical that many financial businesses are prepared enough for the future. At Sibos 2023, he said: “My honest feeling is that they are not as ready as they [say they] are, and they should accelerate their roll-out. While  they have a plan, this isn’t enough. They need to speed up adoption to keep pace with innovation and be prepared for, the future, which is increasingly being driven by regulatory mandates and customer expectations.”

Source: Shutterstock

It’s wise, therefore, for banks and FIs to compare their own strategic priorities, product roadmaps, and plans for the future with those of their peers. This way, they can gain valuable insights into technology trends and benchmark their readiness against industry standards. They can do this by reading the third annual ‘Future of Competitive Advantage in Banking & Payments 2023’ from Bottomline.

The report provides the results of a peer-based, real-time comparison benchmarking survey that took place from May to September 2023. Over 500 banking and FI players across treasury, fraud, operations, innovation, product, and technical implementation at C-Level from 32 countries responded. They were asked about meeting customer expectations, advancing their digital payment transformation strategy, key competitive priorities, and roadmaps for 2023 and beyond.

Zhenya Winter, Head of Marketing for Financial Messaging at the company, said at Sibos 2023: “Our industry is particularly driven by regulation but also customer demand, so what we want to make sure is that, in this competitive environment, banks and FIs can benchmark themselves in real-time to see how they compare in what they’re prioritising.”

One of the report’s key findings is that legacy infrastructure and fraud mitigation tend to be considered the most common barriers to success in the industry. The biggest issue 27% of respondents had with their current payment infrastructure was legacy systems, as 31% said it was also a barrier to adopting real-time payments. Another 44% said replacing this out-of-date IT was one of their top priorities over the next 12 months.

Experts at Bottomline indicate that transitioning from on-premise software to software-as-a-service (SaaS) is the best way to overcome the limitations of legacy infrastructure. Such technology not only fosters operational efficiency and interoperability between internal systems but also aligns with the need for cloud scalability and outsourced updates in an era marked by industry mandates and constant innovation. Other benefits include improved security, enhanced insight into financial information, and assured compliance regarding global financial messaging data processing. This will also help ease prevailing concerns about compliance and regulation, which 69% of respondents expected to become more important this year compared to 2022. However they said that it would be very challenging or somewhat challenging to meet regulatory targets.

Source: Shutterstock

Adoption of new payment rails, such as real-time payments, was the top priority for banks and FIs, with fraud mitigation coming in second at forty-five percent. These two priorities go hand in hand in the context of faster payments and a misconception of faster fraud – an issue that is not as pertinent as before due to better fraud checks and improved pre-validation. Additionally, 56% of FIs believe that ISO 20022 will help them improve their fraud monitoring and management.

Mr Rotzer said: “[ISO 20022] will ease the path for frictionless payment  by leveraging  rich, structured and interoperable data that will allow you to improve fraud detection, ease compliance and provide transparency through better reporting analytics.”

Ms Winter added: “SaaS and ISO 20022 themselves aren’t particularly interesting, but what makes them exciting is the potential ramifications of getting those right in terms of prioritising your roadmap and winning that competitive advantage. It’s the capability that it offers which is so exciting rather than the tech itself.”

However, the report shows that it is not the replacement of legacy tech, fraud prevention, or even the creation of new revenue streams that sits at the forefront of most of the industry’s minds. As previously mentioned, it is actually adopting new payment rails like real-time payments, with 51% of respondents naming it their highest priority for the next twelve months. According to Ms Winter, this is, at least in part, driven by regulation. For example, when the mandate is ratified, banks and FIs in Europe will have only six months until they must enable all EU citizens to be able to receive instant payments and 12 months to send them (While the European Economic Area is 30 months and 36 months, respectively). These are tight deadlines, and there are additional requirements added for pricing, pre-validation, and sanction screening to adhere to as well.

While not as high a priority as these other factors, 52% of respondents said that they are putting an increased focus on cross-border payments at the moment. The greatest pain point related to this, cited by 35% percent of respondents, was a lack of visibility on payment status. This is a surprise when arguably ISO 20022 and Swift gpi offer clear solutions. The issue here is likely to be a lack of adoption of best practices by banks and FIs given the tools are available.

The best recipe for seamless cross-border payments is cooperation, collaboration, and co-existence. Achieving this is particularly difficult in the APAC region because it trades over 28 main currencies and has diverse trade partnerships between countries. Despite collaboration being necessary (as not all banks hold every currency), larger banks don’t tend to partner with many small banks, which can create liquidity challenges for the latter. An alternative is leveraging multi-lateral cross-border payment platforms such as Visa B2B Connect via Bottomline’s API gateway.

For more insight into the main priorities and plans of the financial industry, click here to read the full ‘Future of Competitive Advantage in Banking & Payments 2023’ report.

The post Adapting to a digital future: Banking and payments in 2023 and beyond appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.