The Small Business Tech Stack
Recommended core apps for under-10 teams, by industry.
Notes from Randall Harper. Thirty years working alongside owner-operators, executives and boards — companies of all types and sizes — across entertainment & media, hospitality, service based business, lifestyle businesses, financial services, retail and not-for-profit, in Australia, Asia, the United Kingdom and the United States. What follows is the thinking I keep returning to.
The right stack is the smallest one that works
Tech is a tool, not a trophy. The right stack is the one your team will actually use, not the one with the most impressive logo collection. Resist the urge to assemble what looks like a 'modern' tech stack; assemble the one that fits the shape of your business and stops there.
The universal four
- Communications — Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
- Accounting — Xero or MYOB.
- Storage — Google Drive or OneDrive, with a folder structure designed for a new starter.
- Password management — 1Password or Bitwarden, shared across the team.
Add by industry
Trades and services usually add a field-service tool — ServiceM8, Tradify, simPRO, AroFlo. Professional services add a CRM and a proposal tool — HubSpot, Pipedrive, Better Proposals. Retail and hospitality add a POS — Square, Lightspeed, Vend. Pick the category leader in your space and resist the temptation to chase the newest entrant; the leaders are leaders because they have solved more edge cases than anyone else.
Integration over best-of-breed
A second-best tool that integrates well is usually a better choice than a best-in-class tool that does not. Manual data entry between apps is where small businesses quietly lose hours each week. When evaluating a new tool, ask first whether it talks cleanly to the tools you already have.
Review annually
Once a year, list every subscription, what it does, who uses it, and what it costs. You will almost always find two or three you could cut. The annual review is also the moment to ask the harder question — is each tool still the right one for where the business is now, or is it the right one for where the business used to be?
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The contents of this paper are the opinion of Clear Point Advisory only. Readers should rely on their own judgement and obtain professional advice appropriate to their circumstances.