Virtual Outsourcing!

The premise of The Business Perspective is that small and medium sized businesses can save money by using online or virtual services to avoid in-sourcing common business practices.

I’ll spend the next 5 days reviewing the top 5 services available online for low or no charge to eliminate real costs in your business.

Today, we’ll tackle the biggest time waster of the decade, email. Not only has business become “managed by Outlook,” when employees seem to function only in response to email requests for action or information, but managing email internally is a technical black hole for expenses. Email causes more calls to the IT department or “tech guy” than any other computer application in your business.

If you own your own email server and pay someone to manage it, STOP!

If you are thinking of buying an email server and paying someone to manage it, STOP!

With the ubiquity of business-class email solutions available online, and dozens of top quality hosted Exchange services to provide Microsoft Exchange platforms on a monthly basis, you have no reason to support email internally. Even giant companies are moving email to the virtual world. Why shouldn’t you?

First, call your Internet Provider and ask if they support business class email. The most important question you can ask is “Do you support domain based email addresses?” If they do, you can use email for your team with your website domain in the address. Otherwise, you are stuck with addresses that end with “@yourisp.net” or something equally “small time.”

If your ISP is too expensive or can’t offer domain based emails, check online. Any number of services will get you online with business class email in a day. Google BlueTie, GoDaddy, or Everyone.net. You should also Google “Hosted Exchange Services” and wade through hundreds of results

I use Cheap Domain Registration.com, a great site that offers hosted business class email from just $8 per month.

For a home based business or small office of under 5 staff, you can be up and running with 10 accounts for under $25 per month. Small business owners can find quality hosted Exchange based services for about $20 per employee per month. Medium sized firms should expect to pay more, but receive a lot more, including archived access, large account storage, and backup/retrieval services. Firms above 50 employees can improve quality and save up to $10,000 by going virtual with their email management.

Email is the first best Internet application, so don’t reinvent the wheel. Log into one of these sites, sign up, and be getting email for your business tomorrow, with none of the hassles of managing your own systems.