Lately, the IT world has been abuzz with talk of “cloud computing”, “cloud services”, “cloud storage”, and pretty much everything else having to do with clouds. In an earlier post I talked about some of the risks of using these cloud services. This time, we’ll look at what you stand to gain from them.
Even two years ago, in order to start a business you’d need to think seriously about getting some basic infrastructure in place just so you can look the part. Those days are all but gone now. Let’s take a look at the sorts of IT services you might need to support a new business.
Internet Domain
Having your own domain isn’t strictly necessary, but really, why not? There are literally dozens of registrars out there who will sell you a domain name. Heck, my company can sell you one if you really want. Register.com is fairly reputable and has been in business for a long time, although I don’t use them personally.
Now that you’ve got a domain name, you need an email service that will support it. For this exercise, I’m going to suggest Google Apps. It’s free in it’s most basic incarnation and gets you a bunch of value added services beyond email. Bear in mind that there are lots of other ways to tackle email, including many low cost and even free options from other companies.
Fax
Personally, I hate faxes but they are nonetheless a fact of life. In fact, legal documents cannot be emailed, so you may find yourself doing business with companies that require you to be able to send and receive faxes. Luckily, this is a really easy problem to solve. There are two good options here, efax and faxaway. Efax is much more polished, and much more expensive. Faxaway is less polished but darn near free at $2/month for your unlimited faxes to your incoming number including voicemail service. You also will pay a few pennies per outbound fax.
Telephone
The explosion of VoIP telephony means there are dozens of options for telecommunication now. Since you probably signed up for faxaway, if you like you can use their voicemail service for inbound calls. For outbound, there are lots of options, but the 800lb gorilla of them all is Skype. They’ve been around for a long time and allow you to download and use their client for free. Since we’re talking about setting up a business here, you will likely want to sign up for a monthly subscription to skype and purchase an inbound telephone number. These services are nonetheless very cheap, around $10 per month. Beyond the quick setup and low cost, pc-based VoIP has the advantage of portability. Set up your laptop in Panera, the local business incubator, or a friends garage, and you’re up and running.
Document Management
It’s not a matter of if, but simply when, in the course of a business that you will need to draft some documents. The great news is that since you already signed up for Google Apps for email, you get Google Docs included with it. Google Docs provides word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation functions which are (in theory) Microsoft Word compatible. They’re certainly not as robust as some of their competitors, but they sure do work.
While you’re at it, however, you could also check out Zoho Office or download OpenOffice to your local PC.
Invoicing
Chances are that if you’re doing work, you’re going to need to ask people to pay you. Luckily, there’s lots of ways to do that. There are several on-line accounting packages worth taking a look at, including Freshbooks and Zoho Invoices.
Customer Relationship Management
CRM is the acronym for your old fashioned customer list. Luckily, again, there’s lots of options out there including Zoho CRM, HighRise, and SalesForce.com. Or, if you prefer to keep things simple, you can just use the Google Contacts application that came with your Google Apps setup.
Web Presence
Now that you’ve got the basics of your business covered, you’ll need to promote yourself. A good place to start is with a solid promotional web-page explaining your business and products. The good news is that Google Apps gives you headstart on this front as well, with the Google Sites feature of Google Apps. Obviously, you can also choose to host your website with a plethora of other hosts or services as well.
Beyond these basic services, there are dozens of other services available on-line. Just make sure to keep in mind what you’re getting for your money (or free). You might find my previous articles on VoIP technology and SAAS cloud services to be helpful with that.
Last, but certainly not least, remember to have fun!
Great article, Erik.
I used Vonage at home about four years ago. Later when I needed a business solution I gave Sykpe a go for a year starting about two years ago. I signed up both for an incoming number and unlimited outgoing. It was very nice in that it was ultra-portable, reliable, the call quality was good, and it was practically free. I found it impossible to completely make the switch, though, as any outgoing calls did not show up on my recipients’ Caller ID as my business or even myself, but always unavailable or something with a bunch of zeroes in it. That appeared way too unprofessional to me. So when it was time to renew, I simply let it lapse.
Last year I ported my business’ land line to Vonage, and have found that I love it every bit as much as I ever did. Especially nice is that now they have voice-to-text transcription for voice mails, which translates pretty reliably, too, and gets sent to your email. And for portability: if you don’t like the USB-phone option, their softphone is a (dumbed-down but perfectly suitable for a freelancer) version of CounterPath’s Bria, which is pretty nice.
I’m definitely with you on Google Apps. I live by their calendar (and reminders-via-SMS)! Gmail is a keeper, too. And Freshbooks is an awesome company. Do you know if they still do tele-seminars like they used to?
Hi Jeannie,
Thanks for the note about Vonage, it’s definitely another great option. The cool thing about starting out lightweight with something like Skype or Vonage is that you can always swap to another system or step up to a more advanced system if needs dictate. That said, however, porting numbers from an outfit like Skype or Vonage to a wholesale provider might be tough, so it’s something to keep in mind if you intend to put a lot of branding effort into your telephone number.
Personally, I prefer using email so I can keep my dependence on a constant phone number as minimal as possible.
–erik