Beverage distribution is a logistics business. Orders come in, inventory is tracked, routes are planned, deliveries are coordinated, and customers and employees need to stay in communication throughout the process. Much of that work now depends on an internet connection.

For businesses with operations spread across warehouses, offices, delivery routes, and customer locations, an internet outage can quickly become an operational problem. Employees may lose access to the systems they use to process orders, communicate with customers, manage inventory, or coordinate deliveries.

Watkins Distributing, a fourth-generation family-owned beverage distributor in the Inland Northwest, experienced that firsthand when its primary internet provider went down. The company distributes beer, along with water, energy drinks, and canned cocktails. Its operations depend on keeping products moving from suppliers to retailers, making reliable connectivity an important part of the infrastructure behind the business.

“We have real dollars that are at risk of being lost,” says Annie Pfinsgraff, vice president at Jerome, Idaho-based Watkins Distributing.

Watkins already had taken a step to reduce that risk. In addition to its primary internet service, the company had Intermax as a backup provider. When the primary connection failed, the backup connection became the company's way to maintain connectivity while the outage was addressed. Pfinsgraff says the difference was particularly noticeable in how quickly the backup provider responded.

“Our main internet provider went down, and Intermax as our backup kind of stepped in,” she says. “I actually had a guy coming out here in about 30 minutes, whereas with my first internet provider, you have to get on the phone and be routed to someone else and get on the schedule.”

The experience illustrates one of the basic principles of network redundancy: a business doesn't have to rely on a single connection to keep its operations online. A backup connection can provide another path to the internet if the primary connection fails. For some businesses, that may mean employees can continue working while an outage is resolved rather than waiting for the primary service to return.

The approach is particularly relevant for businesses whose operations depend heavily on connected systems. Distributors, manufacturers, healthcare providers, financial institutions, and other businesses can face different consequences from an outage, but the underlying problem is similar: when connectivity is interrupted, work can stop with it. Adding redundancy requires an investment, and businesses have to consider how much downtime could cost them compared with the cost of maintaining a backup connection. 

There is also a practical consideration. Technology changes can take time and create disruption of their own, which can make businesses reluctant to modify systems that are already working.

For Watkins, establishing a backup connection provided a way to address one piece of that risk without immediately changing its entire technology infrastructure. Pfinsgraff says the transition to the backup service was relatively quick. That experience also gave the company a different perspective on making changes to its technology systems.

“I think most companies are nervous about changing any of our systems because it usually is time, money, and stress,” she says. “But they made it quick. They made it easy. So the transition was not as scary as a lot of transitions can be.”

The broader lesson for businesses is that redundancy doesn't necessarily mean duplicating an entire technology environment. It can mean identifying the systems that are most important to keeping the business running and determining what happens if one of them fails.

That planning can look different from one business to another. A distributor may prioritize connectivity between its office, warehouse, and employees. A manufacturer may focus on keeping production systems connected. A professional services firm may be most concerned with access to cloud applications and communication tools. The first step is understanding where an outage would have the greatest operational impact.

For Watkins, the value of that planning became clear when its primary internet connection failed. The company had already put another connection in place, giving it an alternative when it needed one. That experience also highlights a larger shift in how businesses think about technology infrastructure. Internet access is more than simply a way for employees to browse the web or send email. For many companies, it is part of the foundation supporting everyday operations. That makes the question less about whether an outage will ever happen and more about what happens when it does.

For businesses operating on tight schedules, serving customers across a region, or depending on cloud-based systems, having a plan for connectivity failures can be one part of broader business continuity planning. A backup connection won't prevent every technology problem. It can, however, give a business another option when its primary connection goes down.

For Watkins Distributing, that option moved from a contingency on paper to something the company experienced in practice. And for other businesses, that may be the more useful question to ask: If our primary connection disappeared tomorrow, what would keep the business moving?

Tracy McNab, content manager at Intermax Networks, has nearly 10 years of marketing experience, specializing in content strategy, SEO, visual storytelling, and multimedia production.