For a company of 15 people all requiring email, web access, centralised file store and general office applications, the following is an outline shopping list for budgetary purposes.

PCs: about £500 each x 15 = £7,500

Server: £1,000-£3,000

Network: £1000-£2500

ISP & domain name: £100-£500

Email software: about £1,500-£2,000

Website: £200-£3,000

General office software: £300/PC = £4,500

Finance application: £100-£500

Customer relationship management system: £100-£2,000

There are two other significant but important costs that need to be considered.

One is the services of an IT professional or IT services company. If you use an individual or very small company to help you, it is likely to cost something in the region of £250-£450 a day.

A larger IT services company will charge £500-£850 a day and if you go to one of the large consultancies you can expect to pay in excess of £1,000 a day for IT help and advice.

The other very important cost to consider is time. A number of people within your company will have to invest a significant amount of time to ensure you get the right solution, and during implementation or upgrade of your systems there is likely to be some disruption of your day-to-day business.

It depends on the work being done but it is not uncommon for an implementation to take several days or even a number of weeks to be fully operational.

You should ask to see a timetable for any significant implementation or upgrade.