Business Tech for Beginners

Alan is at Microsoft UK HQ to talk to Project Manager Ben De St Paer-Gotc about the best tech to get you on the Road to Success.

Note: This transcription has been generated with AI and there may be errors present. 

 

When you first start up your company, you’re wondering what technology do you need to buy? Do you need a certain laptop? Do you need a certain phone? Do you need certain equipment to be able to take payments when you’re out there dealing with people? Well, my name is Alan Donegan. I’m from the Popup Business School and I’m here with Ben.

Hi, I’m Ben Gotch. I work at Microsoft as a project manager, and the fees that were shown today on my own.

We have to say that say that, and yeah, we’re gonna have a chat about what technology will help you when you first start up, Ben, what do you think people need when they’re starting a business?

It’s really interesting is one of the things which, at least I see and his perception of seen is that you have to have Mr. Really jazzy device to get going, that you need something cool that you need, the latest phone that you need, Mac or surface or top end laptop, to do it, you have to spend hundreds and 1000s of pounds,

I spent a fortune on my laptop, when I first launched, it’s been a couple of grand on a really nice laptop, there was meant edit video and all that stuff.

So there’s something to be said that kit that is more expensive, will more than likely last longer. But it won’t have any more features, it won’t have anything new, you won’t be missing out on anything. A lot of the experience you get on a laptop, or Mac iPhone or Droid or whatever comes from how you use it and how you set it up. If I were looking at starting a business, and I wanted to do it on a budget, I probably look at spending about three or 400 pounds of most on probably a laptop, or I would go for something like a tablet, probably an iPad. The reason I go for either of those two is that when I’m looking at the device, I want to look at the ecosystem around it, I want to look at what I can hook into it, and what I can connect to it. If we consider the laptop, very traditional USB ports are always a big win. Same as a Mac, pos have the advantage that given the history of computing over the last 1020 years, there are a lot more applications and a lot more peripherals out there. Things like barcode scanners, printers, card readers, which will work more easily and have more software available for a PC. So it’s really just a depending on your confidence levels, I’d say that if you want something where they’re your control is probably lower. Your ability to customise your ability to innovate is slightly lower, I’d probably go for iOS, so I’d go for an iPad, if you want something that’s probably cheaper than iPad. But it’s still in that tablet range, I’d go for an Android. Or if you want something to use for everything, I’d probably go for a laptop. So if we’re looking at that a very basic foundation for setting up a business, a lot of the other stuff and around talks about having an email address, having a website and a lot of that’s caused by the business school, there are loads of different ways to do that. And it’s the same as also the software on the machine. There are loads of ways to write letters, write invoices, track your finances, and a lot of that comes down to how much you want to pay for it. Now start I work at Microsoft, one of the options is to go for a cloud based solution, you’ve got something like Microsoft 365, Google Drive, or other competitors or other options out there.

We’ve tended to the BBC now. Exactly. I’ve got to be careful. So So what are your main options. So

the three main options you could really go for are buying a piece of Office software outright, so buys office,

which is fantastic. And a lot of the businesses out there will use Microsoft Office. So if you’re sharing PowerPoints, or Word documents or Excel files, it’s actually quite useful if you’re selling business to business office is very useful.

You’ve got something like a subscription service. So Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365, which provides online storage for backup as well, which is a layer of security. You also tend to get free updates to the software over that time period as well, which in itself is an advantage. And then your last option is going for a free service. Now be careful where you download it from as not all downloads are equal. If you download it from the original site or a reputable site, do your research, it will work it will be free and it will probably still be very good. There are some awesome crowdfunded, crowdsource projects out there, be careful because a malicious version is not going to do any good for your software and only good for your machine.

So the main things to think about when you’re setting up your business technology wise

are pick a device you’ll run your business run to try and stick if you can with one to two devices. You either need a computer or tablet of some form with an accessory that will allow you to do car transactions. You will need to get some software to edit Word files to edit Excel files to edit presentations so that you can interface with our businesses. You will need some AV cloud or physical backup and you will need to also set up a website and some sort of email communication setup. I know Alan talks a lot about that the options for that how to do a free the ways to do that. If you’ve then got that if you’ve then got the point where you can take payments you’ve got that you’ve got again Aaron’s website stuff he talks about and he does within pop up business school talks about doing online payments and the ways to set that up really easily.

PayPal is normally the quickest and easiest one,

being able to have something Unlike that, being able to set that up, be able to take transactions and payments in person being able to communicate with your consumers with other businesses that is going to produce paper trail if nothing else will really support you, and allow you to actually secure that communication with other businesses.

So if you have any specific questions for Ben or I, about what laptop you should get, what tablet you should get what phone you should get to start up your business, please put it in the comments below and we will answer if not, then we are doing daily videos on inspiration and advice for you to help you start your business and make your own money. Hit subscribe on YouTube channel to get the latest videos and send us your questions. We’ll see you soon.