How to store during an office move
The ultimate goal for most local businesses is growth, but suffice to say, fast growth isn’t easy.
Business growth comes with a range of issues such as needing to quickly move your employees and your stock when upgrading your office space. Extensive planning is required if you are to sustain this growth, particularly during an office move where transport and storage can throw up problems.
The purpose of today’s article is to look at some of the options available when upgrading offices in terms of storage and transport, before you do set the wheels of business growth in motion.
Logistics will be key
Transport and storage are going to some of your top concerns ahead of moving your business. You may have relied on your previous office or small warehouse for storage and this may have resulted in a lack of transportation options in your business. In an office move, effective transportation of stock is crucial, and van hire or even a professional removals company might be useful. Not all logistics companies will be able to supply drivers who drive abroad, meaning that you might have to span your net wider. If transportation is still an issue, it might be time to consider the storage costs involved with moving to larger facilities provided by storage companies. It could well be more cost effective than continuously transporting stock around.
It won’t be a “lift and shift” approach
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that just because it works on home soil, your business is going to function with the same approach in your new office location. In an ideal world, this would happen and there are cases where you might find some stock at your old office location and some stock at your new office location, rather than a complete ‘lift’ of all your stock in one move. This can cause issues for customers and shipping orders out on time. However, you can take advantage of your new customers in the new office location as customers at home are possibly a lot different to those you were working with previously. This is something that you need to take into account; don’t be fooled into thinking that you can move all your stock in one go, as often it takes time to move offices.
Security
Keeping your stock secure during is the most important aspect of storing during an office move the way in which you communicate with customers might have to change. You should try and tag important electronic equipment and maybe take advantage of GPS tracking on the devices themselves. However, the best way to keep stock secure is to select a safe storage facility near your new office location and ask around other local businesses to validate the storage company of your choosing. After all, there is little value in upgrading your office space if you lose large amounts of stock during the move.
Adapt to your new office location
Slighlty aside from the logistical side of moving offices, there will be new ways of thinking and carrying out business in a new location. Even if you have accepted that you will have to make slight tweaks to your business model, particularly overseas, all of this will be for nothing if you get your communication wrong. As we all know, different cultures have different ways of communicating. What might be deemed acceptable in the UK, is in actual fact hugely offensive in another area of the world. Again, even if you have put together the perfect business model for your destination countries of choice, all of this will be for nothing if you are not communicating in the right way with potential customers.
