Friends ask me all the time: how much would it cost to start a business from an IT perspective, as in get a website, get email, phone numbers, an ERP system, a CRM system, some basic automation, etc. This makes non-techies very nervous when just starting out on the cheap. Word on the street is [...]

I get asked very often by friends how much it would cost to start a business from an IT perspective, i.e. get a website, get email, phone numbers, an ERP system, a CRM system, some basic automation, etc. This makes non-techies very nervous when just starting out on the cheap, because word on the street is that these things cost millions. Interestingly enough, most people don’t know that they can do most of what expensive packages do for nothing more than MS Office or OpenOffice and a little elbow grease.

This article is not meant as an in depth how-to but more as an example of what you can get done with some training when just starting out.