While serviced offices have always been considered the preserve of the SME or small to medium sized enterprise, in reality they serve a far greater audience.
Because of their incredible flexibility, serviced offices offer the start-up or one-man (or woman) business the opportunity to create a professional façade for their customers to marvel at. Shining marble entrance lobbies, well-stocked cafeterias, plush meeting rooms – all far more palatial than a small business just starting out on the road to stardom could afford if serviced offices were not around. Short-term contracts, small deposits, fully furnished offices and, in today’s economic environment, deals to be done have created a heyday for serviced offices, especially in the capital.
But that’s not the full story either because one of the most advantageous features of serviced offices is the ability of a company to set up an entire business on a shoestring in next to no time. Phone lines, broadband and all the paraphernalia of a modern business can be up and running over a weekend and you can be trading on Monday morning. It’s the non-virtual equivalent of a web-based business, only even more simple to start up.
It’s also not just small businesses that take advantage of this flexibility. Larger organisations looking to expand their operations into a new region can use serviced offices to quickly and cheaply set up satellite teams. When a bigger company grows out of its current office space, instead of buying or renting another building they could just rent serviced offices instead to minimise overheads. Then again, when it is more convenient to have particular teams in disparate locations they can use serviced offices in multiple cities to achieve their goals – sales teams based up and down the country, the accounts department centralised in one office, or an established company’s R&D team for a new product set up in a flash to handle all the facets of a new venture.
Thank goodness for serviced offices, for without them the new wave of entrepreneurs, businesses squeezed from their offices by growing rents and those downsizing due to recessionary cuts would have nowhere to go.
