IT business from scratch: business plan for an IT company
The 21st century can be confidently called the beginning of the digital era. Today, with the help of the Internet, a person can get almost everything that is necessary for modern life - knowledge, skills, resources. It is not surprising that this dynamically developing information technology market is attracting an increasing number of startups - young people with ambitious ideas, which in the future should bring benefits to humanity and income to their creator.
How to start an IT business from scratch? What promising areas for this market exist today and what difficulties may lie in wait for a start-up IT company? Let's learn from the example of a business plan.
Business form
How to start creating an IT company? First of all, experts recommend choosing a suitable form of business. The fact is that starting an entrepreneurial activity, any person is forced to revise their professional competencies.
At this time, an entrepreneur will need to solve managerial problems, he will have to acquire some skills in accounting and tax accounting, learn to analyze the market and competitors, and acquire legal knowledge.
Not everyone who plans to start a startup is willing to accept such a challenge. Therefore, it is worth revising the form in which a newcomer plans to organize a business in the IT field.
Where to start? There are the following options:
- Freelance ;
- IT consulting ;
- IT company.
Let's take a closer look at each of the options.
Freelance
Freelancing assumes from an entrepreneur the sale of his own experience and skills, both remotely and offline. This form of doing business involves keeping accounting and tax reporting to a minimum and does not require managerial skills.
Remote work can be found using all the same information technologies - there are many projects on the network that take on the function of an intermediary between an IT specialist and a customer.
You can contact the customer yourself, but such a relationship in a remote form carries some risks.
Modern realities require firms and companies to process the flow of information and move to a fundamentally new level of creating technological products. Keeping an IT specialist on staff or asking for help from an IT company - everyone makes the choice himself. The business plan of an IT company is a well-thought-out and calculated document, coordinated to the smallest detail, on the basis of which the work will be built.
No one will argue that the activities in every company are related to computer technologies, programs, products. IT companies service and technically support the customer's IT processes.
Description of the company, its goals and objectives
Companies providing search, collection, processing and storage, provision and dissemination of information operate in the IT field. The result of the activity is documents, databases, information services. In fact, the company is engaged in the collection and processing of data using software and employees of the company. As a result, the output is an operating software that ensures the operation of the corporate information system, to which all employees have access.
With the help of information technologies, the financial and economic activities of the enterprise, management of production processes, electronic circulation of documentation are carried out.
Professions related to IT support are among the top 50 most in-demand in Russia. The organization of an IT services company is doomed to success.
IT company business plan: where to start?
Choosing your niche
At the start, it is important to define the range of tasks that the company will solve:
- maintenance of automated systems;
- information retrieval work;
- IS for processing the received data;
- work in in the field of economic IP;
- medical IP service;
- geographic (spatial) IP;
- work with personal, group or corporate clients.
Target audience
Business form
How to start creating an IT company? First of all, experts recommend choosing a suitable form of business. The fact is that starting an entrepreneurial activity, any person is forced to revise their professional competencies.
At this time, an entrepreneur will need to solve managerial problems, he will have to acquire some skills in accounting and tax accounting, learn to analyze the market and competitors, and acquire legal knowledge.
Not everyone who plans to start a startup is willing to accept such a challenge. Therefore, it is worth revising the form in which a newcomer plans to organize a business in the IT field.
Where to start? There are the following options:
Let's take a closer look at each of the options.
Freelance
Freelancing assumes from an entrepreneur the sale of his own experience and skills, both remotely and offline. This form of doing business involves keeping accounting and tax reporting to a minimum and does not require managerial skills.
Remote work can be found using all the same information technologies - there are many projects on the network that take on the function of an intermediary between an IT specialist and a customer.
You can contact the customer yourself, but such a relationship in a remote form carries some risks.
IT Consulting
IT consulting is a relatively young business. IT-ideas for business nowadays come down not only to the maintenance of a computer or other technological devices, but also to information support.
The most important advice when selling IT services is to give the client what he wants, not what you already have ready!
Experienced managers point out that customer behavior in IT has undergone significant changes in recent years. The customer is now the central figure in the IT service sales process. And IT companies are fighting for his attention in a crowded market, juggling with the concepts of "unique", "individual", "exclusive"
In small sales of IT services, perhaps this will be enough, perhaps a simple e-mail distribution, call, presentation will work. Selling complex IT solutions is a game in a completely different league.
How to sell IT services: a deal from the inside
A complex sales cycle can typically last more than six months. The number of zeros in the check amount tends to the same figure. Moving a deal through a funnel is not an easy process. Where the sales team faces two main challenges:
- finding the right decision-maker at a high level in the organization;
- explaining to potential customers how a product or service will meet their specific needs
Finding the right person is% success in selling IT services
What difficulties may await us?
Very often, even if a company is interested in our proposal, it may happen that the budget for this article is not laid down. And the deal comes to a standstill.
The solution is to make sure at the first stages that we are communicating with a person who not only makes a decision. But he can, if necessary, allocate a budget, that is, a representative of the company's top management, a top manager.
Economy and business are becoming more digital and automated. To stay competitive, companies need reliable service solutions that help businesses expand their service portfolio and streamline workflows.
In this article, we will tell you about the most relevant services for 2021, and what are the benefits of these solutions for business.
Managed IT
IT service providers analyze the current challenges and problems of the company in the IT infrastructure to provide customized solutions. For example, a Managed IT service, or managed services, allows companies to entrust the management of IT services and processes to a provider, which reduces money and time costs. Business owners can focus on the development of the company, while the operators and specialists of the Managed IT provider provide complex infrastructure services: servers and storage systems, databases, virtualization software, etc.
Choosing a Managed IT service, the business ceases to be responsible for digital processes, since all the work is shifted to the shoulders of the provider. Thus, the client is freed from unnecessary tasks of licensing, searching for software, round-the-clock infrastructure support and other encumbrances, but at the same time receives all the benefits of modern IT services.
Managed IT includes many advanced solutions, such as the Managed DevOps service, which automates and accelerates the development, testing and delivery of applications to users. The service is relevant for companies that develop games, various software, including mobile applications and more complex projects.
Public Cloud
The public cloud (IaaS) includes the computing infrastructure, which consists of servers, data warehouses, networks, operating systems, and programs dedicated to the business by the provider. Renting IaaS allows a business to reduce the cost of purchasing and maintaining its own technologies. The customer pays only for the resources that he actually uses, and the provider is responsible for the deployment and control of the infrastructure. The computing resources of the public cloud are shared between customers.
The public cloud can be used for a wide range of tasks, for example, as a remote disk storage for large amounts of various data or for deploying software development environments. The service is relatively inexpensive and can be quickly implemented. The solution is suitable for both startups and large companies.
Private Cloud
A private cloud is an isolated environment with a secure IT infrastructure under the full control of the provider. You can transfer important, business-critical services and data to a private cloud. The provider is responsible for installing the solution, which can implement the service both in the customer's data center and on its own infrastructure. It is possible to create a hybrid environment by expanding the company's cloud at the expense of the provider's resources.
How is a private cloud different from a public one? Private solutions have all the advantages of a public cloud, while providing more options for configuring infrastructure, scaling, maintaining, and also have an increased level of security. This service is suitable for companies and organizations that value the secure processing and storage of critical business data.
VDI, or virtual desktop infrastructure, provides “remote workstations” that can replace the purchase of expensive hardware and licensed software.
