Social Business Networking opportunities abound at Bizerc

In business, “infrastructure” is not about the power plants, bridges, roads, and sewers that support modern society. Instead, it’s about the foundation requirements needed to run your business. Having a tightly knit group of professional associations is another major key to a solid foundation.

There are three essential pieces of infrastructure that every business must have. These include the following:

The legal foundation for your business.

As a business you exist at the discretion of your state, province, or federal government (and sometimes more than one of these). From an infrastructural point-of-view, this is where you start to build your business. You need to have a legal status to exist. Forming a corporation, partnership, proprietorship, or LLC and then ensuring that you have the right business licenses, tax registrations, etc. is the place to start. On that foundation, the rest of your business will be built.

The physical foundation for your business.

Your business must exist somewhere. It doesn’t have to be an office or your home – a large number of business literally exist in the ether of the Internet. But there does have to be some physical address your business is tied to. Often this can be a post-office box, but depending on what type of business you have, you may need retail space, office space, meeting space, or warehouse space.

The communications foundation of your business.

Today, more than ever, communications is a vital part of your business infrastructure. It used to be that you had to have envelopes and stamps. No longer. Today’s business is transacted increasingly over the Internet and any business must have the basic infrastructure to do this. The minimum communications infrastructure includes: an Internet provider, an email address (or several), fax access (service, fax-to-email, or fax machine) and a telephone (with or without advance voice-mail, auto-attendant or other features). A PC and a website are not absolute requirements right now, but they are quickly becoming so.

The recordkeeping foundation of your business.

Recordkeeping will always be an important attribute of the infrastructure of any business. From the moment you establish the legal foundation of your business, you will want to, and will be required to, keep records. Legal records, accounting records, communications records and other information will have to be maintained and retained. Storage is essential whether the records are in banker’s boxes, file cabinets, or stored in a personal computer. Never underestimate the recordkeeping infrastructure necessary to run your business.

To every type of a business an infrastructure.

So far, we’ve only addressed certain basic infrastructural necessities of a business. Of course the full scope of a business’s infrastructure depends on the type of business. Manufacturers, for example, may have other infrastructural needs. A distributor will have infrastructure for warehousing and shipping items and a taxi service would have still different requirements.

Think Infrastructure Early

The best time to think about your infrastructural requirements is before you start your business. The exact needs of your business could well involve significant cash outlays that you will need to know about before you start your business.

Never forget your infrastructure.
The problem with infrastructure is that, often, it tends to one of those “fire and forget” investments. Buy it once and don’t worry about for some number of years. The problem is that infrastructure ages. It is also essential. When it does eventually breakdown, it will need to be replaced soon. To avoid sudden and unexpected demands on your cashflow, make sure to regularly examine the state of your infrastructure.

Bizerc keeps your business connected and up to speed with our vast social business networking.