You’ve got a business to run. And now you have to run it while you’re moving it from one location to another! How do you keep your Austin business growing and the profits flowing while your furniture’s going out the door? That’s the essential question of office relocation! Answer it incorrectly, and your productivity and profits will go out the door with the furniture.
At A-1 Freeman Moving Group, we’ve got a right answer for you – one that can help you keep clear of 8 faux pas that we, as
office relocation specialists, find all too often made:
- Not Planning Ahead. As soon as you realize you’ve got to move, that’s when you ought to get down to planning for it. Sadly, too many companies begin their office relocation planning a little too late. Too late for what, you ask? Well, too late for moving companies and other providers to create a decent proposal for you, let alone properly deliver the goods and services you purchase from them. Remember: too little time usually opens the door for too many mistakes. Let the size of your business and the complexity of your move – i.e., the number of steps that must be taken before other steps can be started – guide you in figuring out how soon is soon enough.
- Not Checking Out Your Mover Thoroughly. Office relocations are tricky. You need a mover who is savvy enough to deal with office furniture and modular systems, computer systems and networking, office equipment, machinery, and hardware, cabling, phone systems, security systems, building permits, and ... that’s just thinking about, make sure they’re legitimate. Check https://ai.fmcsa.dot.gove/hhg/search.asp to see, first of all, that they’re U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) licensed and insured, especially for interstate commerce. Read the reviews at bbb.org. to learn if any criticisms of them are on file with the Better Business Bureau. And, if at all possible, consult with other companies who’ve used them to learn how well they fulfilled their contractual promises. It’s also a good idea to inquire about their moving crews – whether they’re full-time employees or temps, whether they’ve been background checked and drug tested, and whether they adhere to standard chain-of-custody procedures.
- Not Coordinating and Communicating Sufficiently with Your Mover. Your office relocation manager has to work with the project manager your moving company has assigned to insure that your internal team and the moving company’s team are equally up to speed. Any amendments to the schedule have to be properly relayed to all those involved, lest one delay engender others and cause all kinds of glitches and cost overruns.
Not Committing Enough Internal Staff to Your Move. The complexity of any office relocation practically mandates that you recruit the help of employees from within your organization. Look for people in each department who comprehend their department’s needs fully and have access to pertinent company records. That may not automatically be the department head! In truth, you’re often better off getting the help of veteran but non-managerial staffers, as they’ll be more inclined to follow your relocation manager’s direction without argument.- Not Keeping to Schedule. It’s seldom the case that an office relocation schedule loses speed. Certainly, various steps can be held hostage for this or that reason. But what frequently happens then is that the schedule is truncated. And that frequently happens because the planning got put off until too late. And what happens when you aim to compensate for lost time? More people from your end and the mover’s end are assigned more overtime hours. Everybody starts annoying everybody else. Things get messy. Mistakes are made. And who pays for all this? Yep. Better to create a rational schedule at the start and stay with it.
- Not Budgeting Appropriately for Your Move. Truth to tell, it’s tough for any company that hasn’t undertaken a relocation before to know just what its move will end up costing. To leave that cost to chance, though, or to budget for it incompletely is a big no-no! Typically, you need to allow for recurring real-estate costs, soft-dollar expenses for, say, employee relocation and training, capital expenses including new furniture and office equipment purchases, moving expenses, and consulting expenses for such things perhaps as interior design and engineering. The more of your likely expenditures you [[plan|[provision]175] for in the beginning, the more governable the expense of your office relocation will be.
- Not Having Sufficient Coverage. If you’ve selected a professional relocation company of any renown, the potential for property damage is slim. Still, you be prepared. Ask your mover about the coverage options they offer and choose the most useful for your firm.
- Not Thinking to Back Up Your Data. We needn’t call up horror stories here. Suffice it to say that while your office relocation is in progress, your company’s material records should be backed up digitally, wherever feasible. Those that can’t be digitized should be stored safely in a warehouse. And your digital data ought to be backed up in the cloud. Historically, losing such data or suffering its destruction isn’t a frequent occurrence. But do you really want to risk it? Then, however you can, back it up!
An excellent way to circumvent these types of blunders – or to compensate for them effectively – is to hire a moving company that has a demonstrable track record of successful office relocations. May we call your attention to A-1 Freeman Moving Group right here in Austin? Check us out as we suggest above. Then review our
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