IT fit for startups

A startup’s IT strategy should be to pay the minimum, pay only for what you are using now, and use only services that will take you to hundreds of employees without any strangling upgrades on the way.

Here’s how we at Conosco guide our startup clients onto the right track for fast growth with minimal setup and running costs. (Disclosure: we re-sell some of these, but we do so because we’re happy to support them under a fixed-price support contract – so we put our money on them being easy to use and reliable.)

First – computers and an internet connection. A laptop covers most requirements and a 13” screen is often enough for mobile working if you have a larger desktop screen in the office. I’d make an Apple MacBook Air or Pro my one luxury – after all, your computer is probably your primary work tool (from £650 net in Apple’s refurb store).

If you need to set up your own internet connection and network, get a business-class ADSL with proper support. Use a solid Cisco router and wireless access point (like the 857W, £210), and use wired connections to the router if possible. This is one area we fight hard to stop customers skimping on – downtime costs everyone far more.

For software applications, we love web-based services – they’re usually cheaper than desktop and server software, you get backups and upgrades without cost or hassle, you can access them from anywhere in the world with a browser, and they make disaster recovery planning easy.

For email, contacts, shared calendars, we use Google Apps – free for up to 50 users and just £33 a user a year if you need more users or advanced features. If you need email archiving for legal purposes, add Google’s Postini. Use it through a web browser rather than Outlook – it’s cheaper and works better for everything except offline access. (Hosted Exchange is an alternative, but Microsoft’s web services are in flux at the moment – I’d avoid them until they settle down.)

Then for creating, storing and sharing your documents, spreadsheets and presentations, try using the same Google Apps account. You can upload existing Microsoft Office files and other types, but once you get going you can do everything through a browser. No tricky VPN connections back to your fileserver, no version control snafus, and you don’t have to pay for expensive MS Office licences. If you’re an advanced Excel user, or need to create press-ready Word documents, you might need MS Office but try Google first – the lack of bells and whistles is a useful lack of distraction.

That should cover your core IT needs. The rest can get specialised, but here are some general tools we like.

You can create a gorgeous web site on WordPress for free and with minimal skills. It’s search-engine friendly and built around a blog – which is a Good Thing – but handles static pages as well. If you’re a hotel, look at the new Buuteeq.

Your accounting package really needs to be scalable. Changing this once you’re running is a huge pain. Forget Sage – it’s a dinosaur and there are now some great web-based services that are easier to use, more flexible and don’t require major upgrades as you grow.

If you can afford it (at least £5,000 a year), NetSuite is the ultimate business management suite – SAP without the tears. At its heart is a highly developed accounting core that can handle multinational groups, but is simple enough for any financially literate person to set up and use, plus a full CRM suite. Then there are integrated modules including helpdesk tickets, project management, ecommerce site, resource scheduling and more. Being a fully integrated system, you can combine data from all areas of your operations into KPIs and dashboards that a multinational would spend millions to achieve. And if it doesn’t do what you need you can customise it extensively, even adding data tables, javascript and custom UIs. We started Conosco on it seven years ago and its capabilities are still growing faster than we can keep up.

If you’re more frugal, look at Kashflow and ClearBooks for accounting (in the UK). For CRM there is Zoho, amongst many. NB if you’re looking at Salesforce’s CRM you might find you can pay a similar amount for NetSuite, get more functionality and avoid systems integration hassles.

That’s enough for now – the point is that you can now get great web-based services for almost anything, usually for very little cost, and by staying web-based you cut out all the complications, cost and hassle of traditional server-based IT. Save the time & money for marketing…