What Does An Online Business Look Like?

In this story a business founder discuss the business issues they faced and how they realized that to solve these they really needed to establish a true Online Business...

"Having started our business we looked at the market place and discovered that for our business we would need to invest in a number of software packages to support our bookkeeping and accounting, our customer relationship management (crm) and our employees in sharing calendars, projects etc.

Most of the business software available was designed to run on a PC or Server within our private network with access limited to when we were in the office. We discovered to allow access to our mobile employees or home workers we needed a Virtual Private Network or "VPN". Although we had some IT expertise we really didn't want to have to set up a VPN as it seemed complicated and had the reputation of being unreliable and too slow."

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

"We had plans to allow our customers to access certain information on our network. We wanted to allow a few selected customers collaborate on the design stage for our next product releases. We also wanted to allow our customers to be able to log any issues on a Help Desk system. When we looked at the market for software we found that web based CRM systems mostly offered only internal features like contact management, lead tracking. We needed the ability for our web based CRM to give customers different privileges or access rights."

Accounting & Bookkeeping

"Our Accountant used a software package that although was efficient for them was not at all user friendly for the average business person. We were given 2 options, either send all receipts and invoices directly to them or install and learn how to use this accounting software. In addition, the accountant was located some way from our office and this meant we could not easily discuss our finances without meeting our accountant. We wanted to be able to have private and secure online accounting where we could collaborate with our accountant on a conference call looking at the same numbers. We also employed a lady part-time to manage the bookkeeping, the lady had just had a baby and wanted to work from home, so again we needed a private and secure online accounting system. We also had established a small branch in another country and wanted to establish a multi-national company Cash Flow forecast, Profit&Loss and Balance Sheet. This global view would give the management team a view on the company's true financial position while still delivering to the needs of individual country accounting and tax regulations."

Remote Working for Employees

"Over 50% of our employees needed to either work from home or are out of the office meeting with customers. We looked at using MS Outlook and MS Exchange as the way to share calendars, tasks and information between employees. Although this was effective, we wanted to manage our calendars so that we could record and bill time spent working on billable customer projects. This really highlighted the fact that we needed our business to be an online business."

A Real Online Business Solution!

"When Microsoft released Sharepoint 2007 a web based collaborative technology, we realized we could really build a secure & private online business which would allow us to easily expand nationally or internationally. Our challenge was to ensure we built something end user friendly for our customers, suppliers and employees. We identified that to be end user friendly we would need to avoid the mistakes that many accounting software companies had made in trying to build a web based CRM from their accounting software. We also identified that if our employees would not use it the whole exercise would be a waste of time. So we designed this online business software firstly supporting our employees and customers and then our accountant! Today we have an online business which is able to grow as we grow, is flexible and utilises the popular MS Sharepoint technology platform. Between 2007-2009 we have refined this Sharepoint online business software platform and now released this, it's called FOX-SBA and it's now available for the benefit of businesses worldwide."

- Stephen Pye, Founder, On Quota International

The online business solutions below offer a variety of choice and will support delivering on your business needs. Typical examples include small businesses needing to offer employees remote working or an international business wanting to quickly establish a connected international remote office.