This is a question bearing its head more and more these days: How much of my business can I move online?
The short answer is – all of it if you want to.
However, before rushing into a hosting provider’s office, let’s first have a look at your business and what would be best for you.
There are a couple of questions that should be asked on this initially:
1. What do you do?
2. How many staff do you have?
3. Do you work in a central office – or are your staff working from home or disparately located?
4. What systems do you currently have in place?
If I took every combination of possible answers to these questions this blog would take three weeks to read, so I am going to concentrate on a medium sized design firm and a small mortgage broking practice as our test cases or guinea pigs.
Medium Sized Design Firm
Answers to questions:
1. What do you do? We are a design firm concentrating in product design and branding.
2. How many staff do you have? 25
3. Do you work in a central office – or is your staff working from home or disparately located? 20 work in the office and we have 5 consultants that are rarely seen.
4. What systems do you currently have in place? At the moment we have an ML350 G4 server which we use for Active Directory, Email and storage. All documents are stored on the server, as well as scans and drawings.
Understanding of the business
My understanding of this business is that they are due for a new server of which they will use for network security, email and storage as they have done the previous one. Being a design firm they are going to have large storage requirements and the ability to access previous works quickly so as to replicate successful branding techniques and campaign works from previous projects.
They have a small disparity to their workforce, with the five consultants (20% of staff) rarely being seen in the office and working on laptops from home and in the field. They would require a connection to the server using a VPN and the quality of Service over this connection is going to be governed by the internet connection at the user side and the office in which the server is located.
Having 20 staff in the office there is definitely a requirement to have the storage remain local, as drawings and project files are large and will take a long time to download from an external source. Additionally with 20 people needing to access these files, the internet connection may again become a bottleneck if this is moved on-line to a hosting provider.
If the company uses any kind of customer information management system to track sales and projects then this is going to work faster from an internally located server. Also in the event of a disconnection of the internet service for any reason, the 20 staff at the office can still work normally on all customer projects and information.
Recommendation
It is recommended here that this business not move entirely on-line. There are some parts of the business which can be moved off-site, such as a mobile work area for the consultants. Something like Microsoft’s SharePoint in both its free and premium versions can provide a platform whereby staff can access, find and save documents whilst they are away from the office.
Microsoft Exchange can be made available on-line, which means that the mobile consultants don’t have to connect to a VPN to access email etc. So, like SharePoint we now have the ability for the office to be made available to all staff without the need for a VPN connection.
For a business like this, any website is going to be brochure style with previous work displayed. It does not matter whether the site is stored on the server with a fixed IP or hosted externally with an external provider. With a Content Management System and reliable hosting provider the site may perform better with an external provider as they have the infrastructure to cope with this type or requirement.
Businesses of this size generally have larger accounting and HR requirements than smaller businesses. This lends itself to accounting and payroll information being stored on the server where back-up can be managed in house and security also locking down these files.
Small Mortgage Broking Practice
Answers to Questions:
1. What do you do? We are a mortgage broking firm specialising in first home buyers and personal service. We ensure that we are available to our clients and come to their home and help them with any decisions pertaining to buying their first home.
2. How many staff do you have? 5
3. Do you work in a central office – or is your staff working from home or disparately located? We have a small home office as our central office; however we all work from home and have our meetings at the client’s residence. The central office does the accounts and books consultants onto jobs. All accounting and payroll information is stored at this location on a PC.
4. What systems do you currently have in place? We are using Gmail for email and Google Docs for document storage. We think we have outgrown this and need to implement new ways of storing, collaborating and securing documents and customer information. We have a website which is a blog-site through www.blogger.com and has a simple email us form on it.
Understanding of the business
This business concentrates on its mobility and customer service. The consultants all meet at the premises of their staff and do the paperwork in front of the client.
The business will need to access standard forms and documentation from lenders as well as being able to store, process and managed relationships with both their customers and the lenders.
Mortgage brokers will need access to email, documents and customer information on the road. They will need to be able to access customer records and documentation easily through some sort of web portal and access email on-line.
Recommendation
Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) is something that this particular company can benefit from. With the business essentials of Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint as well as solutions to make your home office feel more a part of the company Microsoft Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting, BPOS can ensure that a mobile workforce has access to all of the standard documents that your company uses, all of the client files that you store information in and, with Microsoft CRM Online, all your client data and correspondence etc that you need to ensure your client relationships are as close to perfect as they can be.
Using online Exchange for email and SharePoint for document storage and collaboration they now have largely negated the need for a server in the workplace. You can email, create and save docs, collaborate with other workers on a single document and create team sites in SharePoint.
For 5 customers we are looking at approx $125 per month for the Business Productivity Online Suite.
You can add Microsoft CRM hosted solution to this mix for about $90 per user per month.
This is a great, scalable way for a small business to operate, have known costs of employment (or appointment in commission based businesses) and give your users access to cutting edge technologies at a fraction of the up-front costs of purchasing them outright.
This customer would benefit greatly from Microsoft’s offering for their business.
They can also take advantage of Saasu Net Accounts for inexpensive online accounting and Sugar CRM for quality open source CRM options.
To find out more, contact me at Evolve IT and I can come and see you and talk you through your business requirements and how I may be able to help.
Here are some links that you can check out for your own investigations.
Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite
Open Source CRM - Sugar CRM
Saasu Net Accounts
Host your Applications Online
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