6 pieces of software to start your business

Small businesses and startups come with an assortment of exciting and challenging problems. Here are the 6 best pieces of business software we recommend a setting up a business with. Picking these tools will set you up with a strong IT foundation that provides a secure and consistent platform for your new business.

These tools are great for the early stages of a new business and aimed to be flexible enough for any business model.

Microsoft 365 - Email and Calendar 

Microsoft 365 is one of the best email solutions on the market. With one of the largest customer bases, it gives businesses the tools a modern business demands of their email software. This includes advanced spam protection, centralised user administration, email delivery, shared calendars and mailboxes, as well as an industry leading calendar solution.

Within the Microsoft 365 eco system you have a few tiers to choose from. We recommend going the second tier solution which includes all the Desktop apps. Microsoft Outlook is the best email application to run your business from what we use very heavily. Microsoft Word and Excel are ubiquitous in their feature set, and most clients will be using one of them when they send you documents.

Microsoft 365 includes a whole suite of products that has options for all types of businesses. . Starting with a Microsoft 365 subscription brings you powerful enterprise grade tools that grow with you. These tools give you controls that potential customers like big organisations and government may require.

1. Secure
2. Outlook is one of the products we use 24/7
3. Comes with Microsoft Word / Excel / PowerPoint
4. Strong spam protection
5. Your emails have a higher chance of reaching your clients.

Microsoft To Do - Don't forget what they asked you to do

Microsoft ToDo is your always open, always with you, to do list. Both simple and powerful, you can manage small lists as well as long running tasks. With tight integration to 365 Outlook, you can easily move a task from email to your to-do list so you don't forget.

1. Never forget what needs doing
2. Priorities the most important tasks
3. Plan future tasks
4. Flag emails from outlook as a task to come back to
5. Share a to do list with other staff members
6. Label and categorise different ToDo inboxes

SharePoint - A central place to find everything

SharePoint will be your companies knowledge base and information store. You can customize SharePoint extensively to your requirements, or just use it as is out of the box.

An intranet for sharing and storing documents is key to successful business. Store all your business ideas, products or services documentation, contracts or proposals in a secure spot. Always appear professional with the ability to find anything quickly and easily. Don't be emailing everyone asking who has the latest version of a document.

1. Know where to find important information
2. Advanced permissions secure different sub-sites to specific users and groups
3. Always protected and secure
4. No more searching through your inbox, documents, or USB drives for that client contract
5. Your companies intranet, where you can share news and information
6. Tight integration into Microsoft Teams and Outlook 365
7. Powerful enough to handle all your documents as your business grows

OneDrive - Read that document anywhere

OneDrive ties directly into SharePoint. While behind the scenes, OneDrive leverages SharePoint, we find SharePoint to be mainly for the solo files.

OneDrive's strength is enabling it to backup critical files like My Documents and Photos. You can add any other file you want to keep secure backups of too.

You can share files between members, but SharePoint does a better job at this. Think of OneDrive as your place to keep backups and in sync copies of things that are ephemeral or works in progress. The personal storage per employee.

1. Secure backups of your work in progress
2. Never lose a document due to hardware failure
3. Easily access documents on the go from your phone, tablet or laptop.
4. Advanced sharing options to deliver files to your clients in a secure way
5. Keep your documents in sync across multiple devices

Microsoft Teams - Communicate efficiently

Microsoft teams will be the heart of your businesses real-time communication and collaboration. With chat rooms or channels, to collaborating on files or calling each other; Microsoft teams has you covered. Starting a small business no longer requires getting dedicated phone lines and complex chat systems.

1. Realtime communication with your team
2. Easily create multiple chat rooms to accommodate your business
3. Smooth client video calls easily scheduled
4. Tight integration with all other services in this package of tools
5. Runs on most devices from Windows to Mac and iPhone to Android

Microsoft Defender for Business - Take security seriously

Security is a must for any business, big or small. New threats are constantly emerging and a strong security posture is a strong point of trust in taking on new clients. The market demands strong a strong security posture. No one wants to be the business that leaked their, or worse, their clients, data.

1. Leading the market in security capabilities
2. Lightweight and tied into Windows by default
3. Available for mobile devices
4. Central pane of management to see all staff's devices and security risks
5. Track down any security incident and identify the root cause
6. Security posture checking with checks for the simple to the most complex businesses. 

Do you need a hand setting this up?

Digitize has a proven track record in setting up new businesses with software to succeed. While all these tools can be setup by any savvy business owner, we all get busy. We look forward to hearing how we can help.