Avila Business Center

Office As a Service, Virtual Office and Coworking: A Solution for New Challenges

One of the concerns nowadays is the fixed costs that are associated to an Office space. Which are the strategies companies are developing in this domain?

 

Lisbon, Portugal -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/24/2012 -- Besides a redefinition of their location they are betting on the spaces rationalization and on new models which translate, on the one hand, a charges reduction and, on the other hand, a balanced cost-benefit relationship.

It is precisely here that the turnkey office solution comes up, also designated by "Office as a Service", a still recent concept, but that is gaining more expression facing the added values it offers, both for small and big companies.

The "Office as a Service" consists on the renting of an Office in a Business Center, included in the monthly amount a gather of services essentials to the entrepreneurship activity: 24h/7 days a week access, reception service, personalized telephone answering, Internet, telephone line, furniture, maintenance, electricity, water and daily cleaning. In the monthly rent is also included the use of meeting rooms equipped with state of the art technologies for presentations and training sessions.

The "Office as a Service" is a model offered by Office Centers located in prestige addresses with good accesses, both by car and by public transportation being this also a credibility factor facing the possibility companies have by being based in Premium locations and use of modern Office facilities.

Many of the companies hiring this service have the need of telephonic and face to face service, without having to hire people for the job – this service is included in the rent – other added value is being more focused in their core: when the personnel is absent, the Business Center’s secretariat assures the answering, receives the correspondence and forwards the messages and calls externally, in real time.

Besides the image, the flexibility is another advantage of this model: companies may open an Office with two collaborators and if they need to increase the structure they may move to a bigger space within the building, keeping the address and the contacts: the criteria of the amount associated to the Office is the area and not the number of work stations; besides the Virtual Office or the Coworking may also be a solution, in the case the company chooses the telework or to reduce to the minimal the personnel structure.

In the current recession context, differentiation is the keyword, besides cost control. Companies betting on the space rationalization but that keep as a demand the comfort and quality of the facilities, the office’s central location, the client’s proximity and the service’s efficiency, are those which will gain the new challenges.