So, getting ready to run my own law firm is full of all sorts of responsibilities I haven’t had to think about in years:
– MSFT Exchange server on your domain? Gotta hire someone to manage that.
– Email (and Exchange calendar) synch’ed to the phone? Gotta figure out how to manage that.
– Bookkeeping? Yeah. Turns out, March is really sub-optimal in terms of timing for searching for a qualified CPA…
– Taxes? See above. Same issues with the CPA, but more serious concerns about penalties associated with getting it wrong.
– Time Keeping (where not on a project or subscription plan) and Billing? Ugghhh. That’s going to be fun…
– And hardware? My laptop is 7 years old. But it works fine, and much like my car, I’ll probably just drive it into the ground. My phone, on the other hand, is an entirely different issue… ‘Droid? HTC? What’s a verizon customer to do?
And yet, despite all of these issues pulling me away from the core business I’m trying to start — I’m excited. It’s fun and interesting to figure out which offerings in the marketplace make the most sense. I feel like the research to figure out how to run my own practice makes me more able to relate to my clients that need to run their own technology businesses.
“- MSFT Exchange server on your domain? Gotta hire someone to manage that.
– Email (and Exchange calendar) synch’ed to the phone? Gotta figure out how to manage that.”
Just use Google Apps!
Matt:
Thanks for the tip. It’s a great set of tools and I looked into it, but eventually decided to stick with Exchange for 2 reasons.
1. I have developed a filing and flagging system for my emails and tasks that I’ve to manage workflow and unfortunately, the conversation model of email in Gmail doesn’t work with it.
2. The PSTs of my existing calendar and contacts were easy to upload back into outlook. No doubt I could have done the same with Google, but I’d have to learn how to do it rather than applying a process I already knew.
At $7/month, with excellent support, I heartily endorse Sherweb if you are looking for a hosted Exchange provider.