Running a Virtual Company

Although we have a small office in downtown Manassas, it is primarily used for client meetings & strategy sessions. It is where we keep the computer that our bookkeeper uses to stay on top of billing and accounting, and it serves as our mailing address and storage facility. But everyone on the team works primarily from home or at a client location. We’ve been doing this since we opened our doors six years ago.

Thanks to Web 2.0 and some pretty cool tools, we are able to communicate with each other, collaborate and share files as if we were right down the hall instead of 20 or 30 miles apart. And, because of my love for Web 2.0, Zephyr ends up being the “beta-bunny” for a lot of new online services which we are then able to recommend to our clients based on our personal experience. I’ve listed the tools we’re currently using at Zephyr below – if anyone has suggestions or new tools to share, let me know!Telephone Service – we subscribe to Ring Central.  It is a great VoIP system, delivering voice mails right to my Outlook, routing calls to cell phones and the user interface is very user friendly.

Backup Systems – MozyPro is why I sleep at night.  Everyone at Zephyr works from a laptop.  Mozy Pro automatically backs up all our data, emails, etc. every day.  It works quietly in the background while we’re working for our clients.  My laptop could blow up tomorrow and it wouldn’t matter, I’d be restored and in business within hours.

Accounting – We used QuickBooks online for a couple of years.  I still love Quickbooks but the online version isn’t robust enough for us.  So we’ve got QB installed on a computer and I access the data using GotomyPC.  Now I can pull financials whenever or wherever I am by popping in and out of the office computer.

File Sharing – I can’t say enough great things about BaseCamp.  This product, developed by 37 Signals helps us manage projects, files, customers and deadlines.  Our clients love this easy-to-use system.  Every time I think about a feature I’d like to add, 37 Signals is one step ahead.  If you need to manage deadlines, tasks, deliverables, files and clients then I encourage you to check out this software.

Instant Messaging – Skype is incredible.  The entire team uses this for the fast chats and questions that pop up all day.  And when you’re working at home alone for hours it is nice to take a quick break and see who is available online.  I use the built in phone service to bring someone into a client meeting on a conference call.  We transfer files on the fly, and often have 3 or 4 way conversations using Skype’s bridging capability.

Conference Calls – Freeconference.com really is free.  And you can download an interface that lets you schedule conference calls through Outlook, invite attendees and automatically schedule your calendar.   If you want to add services (for pay) like toll-free calling, recording, and computer sharing you’ll register using the online version.  The system  remembers your contacts in an address book and the interface is very intuitive.

Websites -  We use Wordpress and Joomla to develop all our client websites.  These are both open-source CMS tools.  We are passionate about making sure our clients maintain complete control over their websites and domain URLs.  We hear a lot of horror stories about websites being held hostage, or developed in proprietary CMS systems.  WordPress will meet the needs of about 80% of all businesses today that need an online presence.  It’s free, easy to use, and has thousands of great plug-ins to give you the bells and whistles you want.  Joomla is great for larger websites, those that need a lot of content management and more robust applications.  We’re also checking out some of the newer tools on the market today.

So those are the tools we use for the most important parts of running the business.  There are a lot of other fun online resources that we play around with.  But that’s fodder for another column!