As a start-up, what are the most important areas I should be looking at?
The short answer is that you want to be able to save time and money, mainly because you’re probably bootstrapping the business, and because you’re doing everything yourself, you wish you could clone yourself.
So, how do you get more of both?
1. Flexible working because it saves money
Start-ups should always expect the unexpected, so financial flexibility is essential. With flexible workplaces, businesses are not locked into long-term rents and can vary their property overheads as necessary.
Using plug-and-play flexible workplaces also frees up cash for more productive uses, since businesses don’t have to spend capital on equipping the workplace.
Even lower-cost are virtual office services, which provide call and mail handling and a registered address, but cut out the cost of renting physical workspace.
2. More Time
If you run a business, it’s a useful exercise to calculate how much time you spend in a typical month on office management and admin – from repairing the photocopier, to printing documents, to managing cleaning and security.
Using flexible, serviced workplaces allows businesses to offload these tasks, without recruiting extra staff to do them.
Flexible working also reduces time spent commuting. Instead of travelling 60 minutes between the fixed office, home or meetings, work or meet somewhere more convenient – a drop-in business lounge 10 minutes away. Or use a flexible pay-as-you-use video communication studio to ‘meet’ with customers in another city or country instead of travelling there.
The time saved can be diverted to revenue generation and innovation.