IT for a new company: what must work on day one
What a new company's IT needs on the first working day, what can wait, which early decisions become expensive later and what to budget for laptops, licences and a domain.
IT for a new company does not have to be complete on the first working day, but two things must work: email on protected, centrally managed devices and telephony, at least on mobile. So far I have equipped four new companies from the start. Here I describe what has to be in place straight away, what can wait, which decisions become expensive later and what you should budget for the start.
What has to be in place on the first working day
On the first day, staff need to be able to work and to be reachable. Nothing more. For IT this means: every person has an account in the company’s own Microsoft 365 tenant, that is its own environment at Microsoft, with an email address on the company domain. And they have a device that device management controls from the start.
Managed means: the device belongs to the company, receives its settings and security rules centrally and I can lock or wipe it if it is lost. Laptops and phones set themselves up the first time they are switched on. I have described how this works for company phones in phones that set themselves up, and the basics of device management in device management with MDM in business.
For telephony it is enough at first that everyone is reachable on mobile. A cloud phone system with fixed numbers, queues and call forwarding can follow a few days later. My article on cloud phone systems with 3CX and Teams Phone covers the options. The new companies I equipped bought their devices.
What can safely wait a few weeks
In its first weeks a young company has other concerns than a complete IT handbook. Some things can therefore follow later without affecting day-to-day work:
An inventory that records every device with serial number, purchase date and user pays off once more devices come and go. At the start, device management already knows which device belongs to whom.
A properly written description of the environment can follow the launch, once the setup has settled. Accesses and settings should still be recorded from the start.
How a new starter, a leaver or a device order works is easier to describe once it has happened a few times. Later this can become automated onboarding.
Which decisions become expensive later
What gets expensive is not what is missing but what someone sets up quickly as a stopgap at the start and then keeps. I see three points again and again:
- Unmanaged devices. A laptop that starts out without central management has to be brought under management later. My article on taking over Macs in Intune shows how much work that can involve.
- Private accounts. If someone signs up for a service with a private email address or Apple ID, the service belongs to that person. When they leave the company, the access leaves with them.
- Missing single sign-on. Single sign-on (SSO) means that staff sign in to other services such as the CRM or accounting software with their Microsoft 365 account. Without it, each service has its own password, and with every leaver someone has to remember every single place.
When the new company comes out of an existing one
When a company is carved out of another, it does not start from a blank slate. Often the owners want to take over the existing structures or rebuild them in the new company: mailboxes, file storage, groups, permissions. These structures have usually grown over many years. A new system often cannot reproduce them at all, or only with limitations.
My advice: before the move, clarify which structures really have to come along and which the new tenant can handle more simply. For a new company in manufacturing I moved mailboxes and data from the previously used tenant into its own, with a fixed mapping of each old account to its new one. Apple devices that set themselves up and a cloud phone system came on top. The ten staff were able to work after three days.
What does the basic IT setup cost?
To get started, a new company essentially needs three things:
- Laptops. Decent work devices cost between €1,000 and €1,500, depending on requirements.
- Licences. Microsoft 365 Business Premium costs €20.01* net per person per month on a one-year term. Extras such as telephony come on top.
- A domain. That is the address at which the company receives email, for example companyname.com.
As a Microsoft partner, I book the licences through my distributor. To do so, I link the company’s tenant to my partner account. No credit card is needed: billing is to the day, by invoice from me at the end of the month. In the first month I can book up to 25 licences as trial licences, so the first costs only arise in the second month.
With these three things I can set up the tenant, get the devices running and, if necessary, hand them to staff on the same day. Which security settings Business Premium already includes for this I describe in Business Premium: unused security features.
Frequently asked questions
Is a private account enough to start with?
No. Services that run on private accounts belong to a person, not to the company. By the time the first person leaves, that becomes a problem. Your own tenant with the company domain costs nothing during the trial and is quick to set up.
Should a new company buy or lease its devices?
The new companies I equipped bought their devices. What matters more than buying or renting is that every device is in device management from day one.
How quickly is IT for a new company ready to use?
If necessary, I can set up the tenant, accounts and devices and hand them over in one day. If mailboxes and data have to come along from an existing company, it takes longer. In my case study with ten staff it took three days.
* Prices net, as of September 2026. Licence prices may have changed since.
Sources
- Business Premium price: ALSO Cloud Marketplace, NCE licence with a one-year term and monthly billing, as of September 2026. Product description: Microsoft Germany – Microsoft 365 Business Premium (in German)
- 25 licences during the trial: Microsoft Learn – Try or buy a Microsoft 365 for business subscription
Reinforcing in-house IT: complement, not replacement
When in-house IT needs external reinforcement, how I share the work with the team, and why responsibilities and access rights have to be settled from the start.
Read→
What does IT support cost? Flat fee, time spent or prepaid hours
How a flat fee for IT support comes about, what it includes, why I rarely use prepaid hours and how you can tell whether you are paying too much or too little for your IT.
Read→
Changing your IT provider, even without a handover
What to secure before you change IT provider: complete documentation, all the access, and a Microsoft 365 tenant that belongs to your company.
Read→