Let’s start with one question that is probably now playing on your mind: what exactly does it mean to ‘streamline’?
The job listings website Indeed explains that, in a corporate context, streamlining is “the process used to simplify or eliminate unnecessary work-related tasks to improve the efficiency of processes in businesses or organisations.”
If you run a home-based startup that is nonetheless ready to start transitioning to a ‘proper’ office, here are ways you would be able to ease that journey…
Opt for a serviced office
What exactly is a ‘serviced office’? You might have previously heard of the term, which can be used interchangeably with ‘managed office’ or ‘business centre’.
A serviced office is basically an office that, at the point you start renting it, has already been furnished and comes with pre-connected internet and phone lines as well as devices attached to them.
The Startups. website lists a number of in-house facilities and services that tend to be included in serviced offices – such as meeting rooms, a reception team and in-office maintenance staff.
What all of this basically means is that, from the moment you move your business into a serviced office, you won’t need to worry about spending time setting up lots of tech before you can even start working in that office.
This benefit can be an even bigger deal for startups than it is for larger, long-established businesses – since the latter can’t as easily afford to lose potential clients, as could happen if the company misses phone calls while waiting for its phone system to be set up in the new place.
Even the stage of looking for a suitable serviced office can be surprisingly straightforward. You could ask an office broker to peruse various options on your behalf. One such broker would be Office Freedom, which can investigate the choice of serviced offices in the Marylebone area of London, for example.
This is a reminder of another big bonus of serviced offices: they can often be located in particularly bustling areas where getting to and from the workplace wouldn’t have to be any big struggle, thanks to the abundant public transport links.
Pay a lot of attention to cloud computing
‘Cloud computing’ is another term with which you might be only faintly familiar – even if, ironically, you might already be using several services under this category without realising it.
Business News Daily succinctly explains: “With cloud computing, you can access and store data and applications online instead of on a hard drive.”
Cloud storage options include Google Drive and Dropbox, while good examples of cloud-based applications would be Google Docs and Microsoft Excel – as, with both of these, you can save files directly to cloud-based storage.
As a result of entrenching your business in many cloud computing processes, you can reduce the amount of physical hardware that you would need to shift from your home to a dedicated office – since ‘the cloud’ would be a storage space hosted online rather than on a hard drive.
