How to start a slow business 9 – Leave it in the data anyway

Long time no see. I started with about 15 stories for this series, but it ended in the middle due to magazine submissions and business trips. For the time being, I will do my best to aim for 10 times.

Now about the data.

What I would like to recommend to anyone who wants to start a small business with just one or a few people is to avoid paper-based manual work as much as possible. And don't use computer software, use cloud services as much as possible. For example, accounting, inventory management, sales management, customer management, etc.

For several years after starting amirisu, we worked remotely in Tokyo and Yokohama, and then Tokyo and Kobe. We could not send each other paper, so we exchanged everything electronically. Contact is Twitter or LINE chat (currently using a dedicated cloud system). Evernote for notes. Data is Dropbox. Accounting is cloud accounting. Even if I get a quote or price list, I scan it as much as possible and save it to Dropbox.

You can search for them without worrying about losing them all. And even if the number of people increases, it is easy to share with everyone. Of course, Dropbox and cloud accounting have monthly usage fees, but there is no need to buy new software even if you change your computer, and you can always use new services.

The most important thing to avoid in a company with a small number of people is data entry work. and handwritten receipts. Purchasing, warehousing, inventory management, sales, and shipping, which initially required a lot of manual work, were always looking for a new system and ended up with Shopify. It is now possible to use the same data until sales. In the United States, Japan, stores and online shops, inventory is managed on the same system, so there is almost no manual work. If you want to see the sales data, just open the screen.

Such systems used to be developed by large companies by paying large sums of money to system companies, but now they can be used for a low monthly fee. Most of the services you imagine are probably in the cloud. It takes time to investigate, but its power is tremendous. Before you buy any software, do some research first. I really recommend it.