How to set your Covid 19 business premises up to win!
Covid 19 is really messing with how we work. The high acceptance to long distance work is forcing us to question why we locate our businesses in the CBD. Especially given the inflated pricing.
So let’s unpack why businesses typically reside in the same area.
The birth of the CBD
In the very early villages in humanity, community members congregated in the town square to trade goods and services. Visiting this area meant you could get the best possible prices due to the avoidance of shipping or special visits. Thus markets were born.
Essentially if you had a business in a great location and you had strong marketing and a great product to back it up, you typically did well. This has generally held true since the birth of commerce. Commercial property in cities has given people benefits of close proximity to customers, partners and company head offices. Having a workplace in the CBD also has allowed people to come together to share energy, solve problems and unite towards a common goal.
The start of the virtual CBD
With us all getting comfortable with virtual work we are starting to see there’s incredibly efficient methods to still achieve the same results while working remotely. Zoom of Google Hangouts meetings online mean zero commuting and more productivity.
This suggests that being in the city centre isn’t going to yield the results it once did. Therefore paying a premium doesn’t make sense.
There’s a couple of options we see…
Continue paying inflated prices.
Go 100% digital, and have meetups in the city.
Look for alternative ways to maximise
One alternative office method we’ve been thinking about is the idea of having a strategic office in a strong area with high distribution connections. Then holding team meetings there for staff to collaborate every now and then. Which will start what we coin, a distribution based business.
The distribution base business
A distribution based business has a strong strategic advantage when it comes to cost savings and profit maximisation. Ultimately it has two key attributes:
It is a business that keeps a physical premise but locates this in a strategic shipping or distribution location.
It holds on site staff calibration days whilst still giving the team the ability to work from home for the majority of the time.
Summary
There’s no doubt that we’re moving into a new world. With this though, there will be opportunities and better efficiencies in some areas. If you have any other insights and predictions on the topic we would love to hear from you. If you’re looking to optimize your business efficiencies and location we’d love to see if the OC Park is the right fit for your unique make up and distribution needs.