Complete IT package for start-up building finance company: The plug and play principle

Gün­ter Kleen, Chris­t­ian Voß and Marc Schwarzbold founded their own com­pany in April 2017: Kleen-​Voß-​Schwarzbold GmbH & Co​.KG ‚ briefly said KVS. Their busi­ness idea was to offer a build­ing finance con­sul­tancy ser­vice, totally inde­pen­dent of any bank. The trio advise devel­op­ers in need of financ­ing from their Neumün­ster head­quar­ters.

When the three founders aren’t in their office in the cen­tre of Neumün­ster, they are out vis­it­ing clients. Or work­ing from home. “We obvi­ously started think­ing about IT when we were first set­ting up the com­pany. We knew that pro­fes­sional tech­nol­ogy was cru­cial”, recalled Gün­ter Kleen, one of the three founders.

Does it exist?
An all-​round, hassle-​free IT pack­age that’s afford­able for start-​ups?

Kleen searched on Google for a provider offer­ing an inte­grated solu­tion com­pris­ing hard­ware and soft­ware, plus instal­la­tion, admin­is­tra­tion and sup­port. “We may be experts in con­struc­tion financ­ing, but we know lit­tle about IT. And to be hon­est, we don’t really have time to worry about IT. When you’re form­ing a com­pany your head is full of thou­sands of other things.” Kleen stum­bled on IPD NOW’s web­site. “I soon realised they offered exactly what we were look­ing for.”

Gün­ter Kleen vis­ited IP Dynam­ics, the IT sys­tems com­pany behind IPD NOW, at its Ham­burg office. “We knew that we needed a lap­top and a mobile phone for every­one. Plus a PC and a phone for a fixed office work­sta­tion.”

Travel a lot? Cloud-​based solu­tions can sup­port your start-​up

Dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tion with Marten Krull, Sales Man­ager for IPD NOW, the young entre­pre­neurs learned about other pos­si­bil­i­ties: Cloud-​based doc­u­ment stor­age enables the con­sul­tants to access cus­tomer doc­u­ments any­where, even when meet­ing a devel­oper at home in his lounge. In addi­tion to their mobile phones, Marten Krull rec­om­mended that the founders install an IP-​based tele­phony solu­tion. Tele­phone soft­ware runs on all com­put­ers. Wher­ever they are, Gün­ter Kleen and his col­leagues use a head­set to phone from their com­puter. The office land­line num­ber and exten­sion is dis­played. The hard­ware tele­phone at the fixed work­sta­tion in the company’s office is inte­grated into the tele­phony net­work.

Last but not least, IP Dynam­ics advised the com­pany founders to install Office 365. “From a main­te­nance per­spec­tive, this is the most appro­pri­ate solu­tion, espe­cially for start-​ups such as KVS, because you don’t have to worry about updates. And when the three founders log in at the fixed work­sta­tion in the office, each auto­mat­i­cally receives his own per­sonal work envi­ron­ment”, com­mented Marten Krull.

On his return from the meet­ing, Gün­ter Kleen was full of enthu­si­asm as he reported back to his busi­ness part­ners. “A pro­fes­sional IT ser­vice from a sin­gle source, includ­ing 24/​7 sup­port and at a price we can afford – we didn’t need to look any fur­ther.”

Power avail­able? And Inter­net? All set!

They received the con­cept and quote from IP Dynam­ics within a few days. Once the order was con­firmed, a few finer details needed to be sorted. Then Marten Krull and his team set to work. “From expe­ri­ence, the phone con­nec­tion and the mobile phone con­tracts require the longest lead times. You need to allow four weeks for this”, com­mented Marten Krull. “All the rest, such as lap­tops, head­sets and soft­ware, is gen­er­ally sorted within two weeks. We pre­pare every­thing as far as we can at our Ham­burg office. Then we dis­patch the hard­ware. Or, the cus­tomer can col­lect its IT from us, as in the case of KVS. Back at the office, all that remains is to plug every­thing in and get to work. We make any soft­ware adjust­ments and pro­vide a brief induc­tion remotely, via Teamviewer.”

KVS’ three founders needed a bit of patience (around eight weeks in total), as IP Dynam­ics still had to sort one thing out. KVS had already leased a domain and web­space, which was man­aged by a dif­fer­ent com­pany. “The con­tract isn’t actu­ally com­pat­i­ble with Office 365. There were prob­lems cre­at­ing the e-​mail addresses. But after many dis­cus­sions, we finally got every­thing up and run­ning”, said a sat­is­fied Marten Krull.

KVS’ founders accepted the delay: “Hav­ing some­one who knows what they’re doing is worth its weight in gold. For us, it was impor­tant that every­thing worked in the end. IP Dynam­ics always refers to the “Plug and Play” prin­ci­ple – and it really is just that”, con­cluded Gün­ter Kleen.