The first year in business is often both the toughest and most rewarding time. It’s when you start to figure out who you are as a business owner, and whether there really are people out there who will pay for your product or service.

CEO and co-founder of modular building startup Dennis Wong launched about a year ago and has spent the past 12 months building out a team, implementing technology, gathering information and proving out his concept.

Building a business and building a team

“This has actually been an amazing process because we were able to stay very lean, we’ve only got a few people, yet we’re able to really figure out the problems. This first year has involved a lot of data gathering,” Wong said, adding to keep costs in check, he’s operating a cloud-first model to operate both his business and his facilities.

“All of the tools that we’re using are essentially cloud-based services, which enables us to keep our cost down, significantly down,” he said.

“We use Xero for all of our accounting and payroll needs. We have a small team, so all of our payroll is integrated with Xero, all of our payroll taxes are paid through Xero.

“We’re also able to pay our bills and create expense reports through our mobile, which has been really efficient. Some of the third party applications we’ve been integrating with include Bill.com and Stripe, and property management tools. It’s been really helpful to be able to stay lean.”

Cloud tech and its many uses

But it’s not just the back-office functions that are based in the cloud, many of the features incorporated in Campsyte’s modular spaces are cloud-based.

“We’ve integrated a lot of technology that would be very costly in a typical building. We use app-based door locks, app-based door bells and app-based heating and cooling sensors, as well as alarm systems,” he said.

“The benefit to having these different services integrated on one platform is time. We’re a small team, and instead of having to make sure that our information is inputted correctly in multiple locations, we just input it once and it syncs seamlessly.”

You can read more about Campsyte and how technology is influencing the small business economy over on Inc.