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 Little Rock business growing and the profits flowing while your furniture’s going out the door? That’s the “million dollar” question of office relocation! Give it a wrong answer, and your productivity and profits will go out the door with the furniture.
At Oil Capitol Relocation, we’ve got a great answer for you – one that can help keep you from making 8 faux pas that we, as
office relocation specialists, find all too typically made:
- Not Planning Ahead. When you first know you’ve got to move, that’s when you should commence planning for it. Unfortunately, too many firms launch into their office relocation planning a little too late. Too late for what, you ask? Well, too late for moving companies and other providers to draft a decent proposal for you, let alone properly deliver the goods and services you purchase from them. Remember: too little time frequently translates into too many errors. Let the size of your firm and the complexity of your move – i.e., the number of tasks that must be finished before other tasks can be begun – guide you in figuring out how soon is soon enough.
- Not Vetting Your Mover Completely. Office relocations are tough. You need a moving company that’s expert enough to handle 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 to begin with}48]! So, whatever moving companies you’re considering, 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 find out if any criticisms of them are on file with the Better Business Bureau. And, if at all possible, consult with other businesses who’ve hired them to see how well they satisfied their contractual responsibilities. It’s also worth your while 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 observe traditional chain-of-custody procedures.
- Not Coordinating and Communicating Properly with Your Mover. Your office relocation manager must work with the project manager your moving company has provided to make sure that your internal team and the moving company’s team are in perfect sync. Any [[changes in the schedule must be properly conveyed to everyone involved, thus helping prevent one delay from creating others and causing all sorts of errors and cost overruns.
Not Devoting Enough Internal Staff to Your Move. The complexity of any office relocation fairly decrees that you call on the help of personnel from within your firm. Select people in each department who apprehend their department’s needs thoroughly and have access to applicable company records. That may not always be the department head! To be honest, you’re often better off soliciting the help of seasoned but non-managerial staffers, as they’ll be more inclined to follow your relocation manager’s dictates without argument.- Not Adhering to Schedule. It’s not often the case that an office relocation schedule slackens. Sure, various tasks can be held hostage for this or that reason. But what frequently happens then is that the schedule gets tightened. And that frequently happens because the planning got off to a late start. And what happens when you try to compensate for lost time? More people from your team and the mover’s team are assigned more overtime hours. Everybody starts getting in the way of everybody else. Things get confusing. Mistakes are made. And who pays for all this? Yep. Better to establish a realistic schedule up front and follow it.
- Not Budgeting Adequately for Your Move. Admittedly, it’s difficult for any company that hasn’t been involved in a relocation before to know exactly what its move will cost when all is said and done. To leave that cost to fate, though, or to budget for it incompletely is a huge no-no! Typically, you need to allow for recurring real-estate costs, soft-dollar expenses for, say, employee relocation and training, capital expenses such as new furniture and office equipment purchases, moving expenses, and consulting expenses for such things perhaps as interior design and engineering. The more of your requirements you give a thought to up front, the more controllable the expense of your office relocation will be.
- Not Having Enough Coverage. If you’ve picked a professional relocation company of any reputation, the possibility of property damage is slight. Still, you should be prepared. Talk with your mover about the coverage options they provide and pick the one that best serves your firm.
- Not Taking Care to Back Up Your Data. There’s no point in recounting horror stories here. Suffice it to say that during your office relocation, your business’s material records are best protected by being backed up digitally, wherever feasible. Those that can’t be digitized ought to be deposited safely in a warehouse. And your digital data ought to be backed up in the cloud. As a matter of historical precedence212, losing such data or suffering its vandalism isn’t a common experience. But do you really want to risk it? Then, for goodness’ sake, back it up!
A big way to prevent these kinds of mistakes – or to compensate for them effectively – is to hire a moving company that has a proven track record of successful office relocations. May we recommend Oil Capitol Relocation right here in Little Rock? Check out our credentials as we suggest above. Then check out our
office relocation services and ...
Request a free quote
