Start a Company With 'Virtually' No Overhead

In the late -1980s, I graduated college and joined a Phoenix area technology company. In those days - before smartphones, let alone widespread Internet availability - most start-up businesses followed a pretty predictable path. They’d rent office space; buy chairs and other office equipment; install a phone system; install a network of PCs; and hire office staff, sales, marketing, and technical people. Employees were all paid actual W-2 salaries and sometimes even promised a percentage of the company. And many of the software packages used internally had to be custom written from scratch or purchased and modified by on staff programmers.

Given today's ubiquity of wireless, broadband Internet access, smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other truly portable computers, as well as cloud computing services, that startup mentality seems almost quaint now. And it’s possible to start a company now with virtually none of that overhead. Make no mistake you’re no more likely to be successful now than you were in those days gone by, but at least you can funnel whatever little capital you do have toward your actual business - toward the processes and products that you should be focusing on - instead of overhead & infrastructure.

You can probably see where I’m going with this: Whether you’re a fledgling startup with the next killer idea, a small business serving local customers, a growing entity with a multi-location or even regional or national footprint your critical business resources are being stretched in multiple directions. But with the advent of so many new technologies, the time has come to focus on what’s truly important to your business. It’s time to focus on your business and offload as much of the unnecessary day-to-day to other processes ... web or otherwise.

We in the technical community have been talking about such things for years. But unlike the 'paperless office' of decades ago, this time it’s not just talk. It’s possible today to safely, securely, and seamlessly offload a lot of your non-core business processes — and even some core, mission-critical needs. So, whereas my blogs frequently focus on buying recommendations, I’m taking the opposite tack and discussing this time what not to buy. Let’s start with some obvious technological targets.

On-Premises Servers

Ah, the good old days; Flying out to Global Center in San Jose so I could physically put my hands inside a server cage and reboot one single errant web server. Jealous? Well, you could implement a modern version of this silliness by buying, deploying, and managing your own servers and server software. But why would you? Servers are expensive, loud, and complex, and they require a certain level of expertise, either from yourself, your own employees or via a support contract of some kind.

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Modern new businesses should seek to minimize or eliminate their exposure to in-house server hardware and software. With the possible exception of centralized local storage and, for large organizations, user management, there’s little need for this complexity, cost and headache. Small businesses should seriously consider the recently released Microsoft Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2011 Essentials, which can integrate with a variety of online services while providing just the basics in-house. And with various cloud storage services such as Vault Services, as well as PC management services such as Microsoft Windows Intune, even the remaining excuses for on-premises servers are beginning to fade.

PCs

If you thought the elimination of local server hardware was shocking, you’re going to want to sit down. For a growing generation of startups, even corporate-funded PCs are going by the way side, replaced by employees’ own PCs. This isn’t really as radical as it sounds. If you sign up for a PC management service such as Intune — starting at $11 per PC per month — you can easily manage these employee-owned PCs, ensuring that they’re up-to-date with software updates and security fixes. And in Intune 2.0, coming later this year, you’ll even be able to remotely deploy software to those PCs.

Another related issue to consider is whether every one even needs a PC. Depending on the business and the individual employees, a high quality smartphone might be enough, especially for sales people or other frequent travelers. Even an iPad or other tablet device can work in the right situations.

Email, Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks

If you’re not an email service provider but you still host your own email servers, you’re either constrained by regulatory or legal reasons, or you’re just wasting your time and money. This is especially true now that there are inexpensive (even free) and high-quality choices for email and personal information management (PIM; i.e., contacts, calendar, and tasks).

For young and new small businesses, Google Apps is an excellent choice for email, contacts, calendar, and task management — and it’s free for businesses with ten or fewer employees. Google Apps provides email with a customized domain, and its services are broadly compatible across different devices. The primary interface is via the web, but users can also use popular email clients such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird, although support for other Google Apps services in native apps is mixed. And the full blown paid for all-the-bells-and-whistles version is ridiculously cheap at $50 per user per year.

Microsoft also, suddenly, has a very viable alternative for cloud-based email, contacts, calendar, and task management in Office 365. Even though there’s no free option, it’s not too expensive — starting at $72 per user per year — and it’s a tad more compatible with Microsoft Office-centric shops including integrated Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (for document collaboration and sharing) and Microsoft Lync (for presence and online communication).

Office Productivity Software

Speaking of Office, it’s worth pointing out that although Microsoft Office 2010 is a mature, highly capable Office productivity suite, it might be overkill for some people. Fortunately, there are several free alternatives, and there’s no reason you can’t mix and match between free and paid offerings, depending on your needs.

One of the best and most obvious of the free Office alternatives is actually another feature of Google Apps called Google Docs. As its name suggests, this service offers web-based versions of Docs, Spreadsheet, and Presentation. And although they’re not quite as powerful as the native apps, and they can’t work while you’re offline, they look and work just like the real thing and could offer enough horsepower for many users. Google Docs are included with Google Apps and include either 8GB or 25GB of Google cloud-based document storage. Heads up for Microsoft Office power users, you’ll experience some fidelity issues if you try to share documents between Office and Google Docs. Especially if you use Excel macros.

For those who still feel they need an Office option that installs locally, look at Open Office. This package offers open source versions of Writer, Calc, and Impress. And although they’re not completely compatible with Microsoft Office, they can work while you’re offline, they look and work just like the real Microsoft thing and offer a lower cost option for many users.

Phones

Another way to appear bigger and more professional than you are is to implement a virtual (VoIP) phone system , such as that offered by Vocalocity. This service is completely web-based and can also provide 800 & fax numbers for customer support and sales, local numbers for geo-diversity, customized hold music, and call routing to any phones — starting at just $39 per phone per month.

Google goers should of course look into Google Voice as well, although this service is geared a little more toward individuals and micro businesses. But Google Voice is a great addition for cell phones. In my humble opinion, every business cell phone user should be using Google Voice for their cellular voice mail. It's speech-to-text feature will text or email you any messages left on your voicemail Inbox with about 95% accuracy.

Office Space

Let’s not stop with Office software: For new and very small businesses, an actual office with a physical presence often isn’t required at all. But thanks to new services, even the smallest business can appear to be big and successful. The key here is to do what bigger companies already do for satellite locations, and rent space where you can drop in at set times for meetings with potential and current clients and perform other face-to-face duties.

Many of these occasional office space services provide a permanent address for your business, where mail and packages can be routed and collected, a permanent receptionist crew, a phone that rings and calls that are directed to the correct employees, no matter where they are and what kind of phones they use. An entry-level package that grants companies 5 days of office space per month, along with the mailing address, receptionist, and phone services, should cost about $200 a month — a far cry from the rental fees on a permanent address.

Post Your Tips!

There are so many excellent ways for up-and-coming companies to save money, and I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface here. If you have some tips of your own, please post a comment below, and I’ll look at compiling them for a follow-up blog posting.

Welcome to the future.