Advice for our new little company

[salbourne]

Hello all

Up until recently I have been working as a permanent member of staff in the General IT Dept (we get in to everything from SQL, VB and ASP, to general network and server support etc - there are 3 of us) at an Automotive Trading and Logistics company.

The 3 of us have now been given the opportunity by the MD to do paid work for external companies whilst still maintaining our permanent jobs.

This is all under the banner of our parent company name 'trading as' our new company name. We've put together a commission structure for the external work (separate structures for in-work hours and out-of-hours) which all goes through our usual payroll etc.

One idea that I had was looking for short term contracts which we would be able to do whilst fulfilling our permanent role commitments, but was wondering if this is feasible given the setup we have? I know that there are plenty of legal/tax issues for normal contractors and am also wondering if any of these are relevant to our setup.

Would anyone be able to advise?

Thanks very much

Andy

[Muttley08]

Would have thought it would be difficult...

At the smaller end of the market, you probably can't compete with one man bands who could undercut you.

The bigger end, you'd probably struggle to compete with experienced contractors.

The other problem is that SQL / VB / ASP are all fairly 'light' stuff, with lots of people doing it. If you specialised you might have more chance.

Worked for a company that tried to grow the business by getting the internal IT department to get outside work - but was a complete shambles. They did a quote to an external based on internal rates, it ended up being about 80k for the supply of 12 laptops - funnily enough they didn't get the work.

[salbourne]

Yeah I see where you're coming from - luckily for us this is more about the company holding on to us as individuals by allowing us to develop ourselves professionally as opposed to expanding the business (although there is some motivation there obviously). It's all good experience for us though as we're already getting into things that there's just no way we would have done only working here.

80K for 12 Laptops That's terrible, we are realistic about how much we can charge but I take your point about possibly falling between a rock and a hard place. Still, the geographic area in which we are operating doesn't seem to be teeming with expertise in the 'light' skills you mention so maybe we'll be OK.

Anyone have any other thoughts?

[thunderlizard]

See if your parent company can do some sales & marketing for you: even offer your services to their existing customers as part of a big corporate account. You'll struggle with just technical ability and no sales oomph.

[salbourne]

Thanks, yes we've been looking into that - we've had a bit of work this way and we've also managed to generate some custom just by asking around on the local Industrial Estate.

Hopefully we'll make a go of it. The biggest hinderance at the moment seems to be fulfilling our permanent role commitments whilst making the time to do the consultancy.