Starting a small business or working from home takes time and costs money. After you have done all the groundwork, such as a business plan, marketing strategy and finances, you will probably start thinking about the cost of PCs and software licenses. At this stage, you might have just quit your day job, have no customers, no income, and a whopping-great bank loan to keep you awake at nights.

Buy the right computer at the right price

Before rushing out to your local computer store, its worth making a checklist of tasks you are likely to need a new PC or notebook to perform. This requires no technical knowledge whatsoever. Any decent computer sales person will be able to translate your needs into features and functionality. The Internet provides a wealth of opportunities to compare prices, brands, delivery schedules, special offers and freebies. And dont be afraid to haggle, even online. The PC market is highly volatile and extremely competitive. Everyone wants to make a sale. Of course, if you just want a bog-standard, cheap PC then visit Dell.com online or give them a call.

The software dilemma

Having wrestled your PC out of its cardboard and polystyrene cocoon, assembled it and switched it on, you now have to consider what software applications and utilities you might need. In an ideal world your software choices would be determined by your business needs rather than the depth of your pockets. However, the reality is that most small businesses simply cannot afford everything they need. Instead, they tend to purchase point solution products that meet specific needs; buy cheap alternatives to familiar brand names; or use illegal, pirated copies of popular applications such as Microsoft Office Suite (a path we strongly recommend you avoid). But there is an alternative.

Whats all the FOSS is about

As your monitor flickers into life, it will be immediately clear what operating system your computer uses. My Dell, for instance, came loaded with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition. Having established what operating system your computer uses, you can now go in search of Freeware and Open Source Software (FOSS). Freeware is proprietary software offered for free by the vendor, usually under certain terms, conditions or restrictions. Open Source is a community or movement of not-for-profit programmers, developers and users dedicated to sharing, developing and improving the code or DNA of an application for everyones benefit. To learn more about FOSS visit the Free Software Foundation website at www.fsf.org or the Open Source Initiative: www.opensource.org.

Assuming your using a Windows operating system, your computer will need to protect itself from viruses, hackers, spyware and adware. Your computer might have come bundled with any number of applications including free firewalls and anti-virus software, which is great. If not, then before you do anything, especially venture onto the Internet, you will need to get some protection.

Free Safeguards

The Internet is teeming with a whole multitude of nasties, such as destructive, self-replicating viruses, vicious migrating worms and deceitful, back-stabbing Trojans. You will also have to contend with insidious, sneaky spyware and adware.

Adware, as the name suggests, infiltrates your computer and displays annoying pop-up advertisements without your consent or control. Spyware is designed to collect and send your personal information to third parties without your knowledge. These applications can be after anything from data on your purchasing habits to stealing your credit card and bank details.

Before you use the Internet its advisable to protect yourself and your computer from attack. Of course, you wont have to worry about viruses if you have already plumped for a Linux operating system.

ZoneAlarm stops intruders from accessing your PC; makes your PC invisible to hackers; and blocks spyware and Trojans from communicating with the Internet.

ZoneAlarm: www.zonelabs.com

AntiVir Personal Edition is a virus scanner that detects and removes more than 50,000 viruses. AntiVir is also available for Linux.

AntiVir: www.free-av.com

Microsoft Windows Defender (Beta 2) is a free anti-spyware program. Its quick and easy to install, and allows you to scan your system manually and automatically for contagion. The software then isolates suspect programs allowing you to quarantine or remove them.

Microsoft Windows Defender (Beta 2): www.microsoft.com

Lavasoft Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy offer genuinely free downloads of their popular and effective anti-adware and anti-spyware products plus regular updates. One word of warning, only install anti-spyware from a recommended, legitimate provider. Some spyware is packaged and peddled as the cure rather than the cause, so be on your guard.

Lavasoft Ad-Aware: www.lavasoft.com
Spybot Search & Destroy: www.safer-networking.org

Free Internet Window Washer 1.2 sponges away the tracks you create every time you use your PC and venture onto the Internet. Free Internet Window Washer 1.2 erases Window's temp folders, run history, your browser's cache, cookies, visited URLs, and much more besides. An added benefit is that Free Internet Window Washer 1.2 also releases valuable disk space.

Free Internet Window Washer 1.2: www.eusing.com

Also see my article: Making SOHO a safer place of business.

Free Office Tools

Having made your computer safe from potential threats, its time to get your hands on all those everyday office applications a business needs, such as a word processor/desktop publisher, spreadsheets, multimedia presentation, graphics and database packages. OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 is an excellent freely available productivity suite that can do just about anything a small business or home office user wants.

OpenOffice.org 2.0.2: www.openoffice.org

Free Email

Well, having a Windows operating system you should have Microsoft Outlook Express email client already on your computer. An alternative is Mozillas Thunderbird 1.5 email, which is safe, fast and easy to use with intelligent spam filters, quick message search, and customizable views. Best of all, its completely free.

Thunderbird 1.5: www.mozilla.com/thunderbird

Of course, the moment you have a business email address youll be inundated with spam. Thats e-junk mail. Not the canned luncheon meat stuff. As already mentioned, you will find that Thunderbird 1.5 offers good anti-spam and anti-phishing protection. Phishing is a term used to describe those scam emails that try to con you out of your bank details and PayPal passwords. However, if you happen to be one of those paranoid types or prefer to use another email client then you can always try MailWasher Free 5.1 anti-spam software.

MailWasher Free 5.1: www.mailwasher.net

Free Contact Management

If deciding when to emerge from the duvet each morning is your idea of time management then your new venture might be in trouble. Working from home requires discipline and routine, as well as motivation. Always be at your computer by 9am, for example, and dedicate 2 hours everyday to making sales calls. Plan and organise your calendar of activities. To help you, try ClickTray Calendar. Its a handy desktop calendar/diary and reminder program in one.

ClickTray Calendar: www.waseo.de

As your contact and time management needs change and grow, you will need something a little more comprehensive than a desktop calendar and reminder. Essential PIM Free is an award-winning, absolutely free personal information manager. Its supported by a large community of users, and has been widely acknowledged as one of the best desktop contact managers available.

Essential PIM Free: www.essentialpim.com

Free CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a pretty big topic, and tends to inspire a great deal of heated debate and argument amongst the global business community. CRM is a business process, philosophy or guiding principle. Not to be confused with CRM software packages, which are the tools that enable businesses to implement their preferred CRM strategies. In a nutshell, CRM is about attracting, building and retaining profitable long term relationships with customers. To achieve this aim a business must gain valuable insights into what its customers want today, and establish an on-going dialogue whereby it can accurately predict their changing needs tomorrow.

Historically, small businesses have viewed CRM software as unnecessary and expensive. By their very nature, small businesses tend to serve local markets and so are closer to their customers. However, the Internet has changed all that. Nowadays small businesses have to compete globally as well as locally. Technology has also had a profound affect on business communications. You can telephone, fax, email, post direct mail, publish immediate response landing pages, and send SMS text messages. If not properly equipped, even a small company with a limited customer base can easily lose control of its business communications. In fact, Royal Mail research shows that UK small and medium-size businesses (SMEs) are losing over 3bn a year as a result of poor business communications.

Most small businesses grow organically. Processes and procedures evolve over time, and software is purchased to provide specific point solutions to accountancy and stock control issues, for example. The problem with this just good enough evolutionary process is it makes small businesses inefficient, slow and vulnerable to attack from larger, more resourceful competitors. The inability to coordinate, monitor and measure advertising, marketing and sales activity will cost a small enterprise time, money and customers.

CRM offers the opportunity to capture customer information and understand the impact of marketing and sales activity on your customers purchase decisions. This valuable customer insight and campaign tracking ability enables you to continually refine your marketing and sales offer to different customer segments, and quickly identify new sales opportunities. CRM can also benefit small and medium-size businesses by streamlining workflow, reducing paperwork, saving time, improving efficiency, and reducing operating costs.

A final note of caution: remember that successful CRM take-up is based on a coherent, shared and understood CRM strategy before you start looking for software.

CRMLogix is a free customer relationship management system (CRM) that automates the workflow of customer-facing organisations, as well as ensuring a uniform approach to sending correspondence. CRMLogix main features: