Technology Changes Use of Office Space

Now that so much technology is available to SME businesses, the need for office space has been drastically reduced.

The effect of this can be seen in lower prices being advertised for office unit leases, and office units unused and vacant. But what are the causes ?

The UK is still engaged in a drift towards a more service based economy. Services don't need product storage space, whether in-house or through outsourced warehousing services, and therefore no need to have physical space to either display or store products.

Also with the move towards out-sourced business units, core work-force sizes are shrinking, and business networks are growing. Why invest in a permanent skill set when the same skills can be found and brought in for specific tasks as and when needed, and not retained on a year-round basis. Services can now be found in abundance to help with marketing, sales, warehousing and distribution, accounts and customer service.

So the move away from physical products and the fragmenting of business operations all mean less core office space is needed. What will business centre managers do about using spare capacity ?

Our resident business consultant, Peter Jones of Blue Oyster Innovation, tells us that office suites are now getting better at recognising the need for office space purely for display and presentation purposes. He is aware of the growth of specialist service providers who can organise room space on a daily basis to take advantage of capacity outages in office suites.

Whilst bigger business centre owners already have their own software to target maximum usage from the available office space, smaller business centre owners had better wake up to the opportunity to increase their revenues and take full cashflow advantage of their capital assets.

Business Information Can Make You Money

SMEs often have a significant amount of customer and supplier information, but find it difficult to put it to use, to add value to their business.

There are some strategic actions they can take, looking in turn at top 10 cost and revenue figures.

Take marketing spend for example. Does the business know who their best customers are, and who are growing in spending profile ? Which advertising channel has the highest returns, in terms of customers who stay long term, and build a spending profile.

Like as not this information is all available, in accounts and in mailing lists, but how to analyse it all and give a precise and complete picture of which customers matter most to a company ?

Is it possible to ask customers what their preferences are through a succinct, easy to manage questionnaire ? Can this information be put to use to determine company strategy and direction regarding products, services and target customers ?

How effective is the corporate website ? Does it get a clear and unique message across to would-be clients about the company, what it does and why that benefits clients ?

On the cost side, can mailing and printing costs be reduced ? Are there other ways to reach customers such as ezines which would actually be better at keeping them in touch ?

Looking at a small workforce, where is their time spent, and where might it be spent to add more value to business turnover ?

Our resident business consultant, Peter Jones, of Blue Oyster Innovation, says that most business owners would benefit from a short introductory chat lasting no more than one hour, reviewing their business from the perspective of the top 10 costs and revenues. Any business consultant can use this to assess where savings and additional revenue can be made, and whether working with them will actually benefit the business over the course of a financial year.

The technology to analyse business information is already available, and can be applied readily to standard format business information. Business managers need to grasp the nettle, take time off from the daily battle ground, and find out whether a small short term investment would pay dividends in the longer term.