You’ve got a business to maintain. And now you‘ve got to maintain it while you’re moving it from one location to another! How do you keep your Tulsa and Oklahoma City business growing and the profits flowing while your furniture’s going out the door? That’s the essential question of office relocation! Answer it inappropriately, and your productivity and profits will go out the door with the furniture.
At Oil Capitol Relocation, we’ve got a correct answer for you – one that’s predicated on helping you keep clear of 8 blunders that we, as
office relocation specialists, find all too often made:
- Not Planning Ahead. The first you know you’ve got to move, that’s when you ought to commence planning for it. Regrettably, too many businesses begin their office relocation planning a little too late. Too late for what, you ask? Well, too late for moving companies and other providers to come up with a reasonable proposal for you, let alone properly deliver the goods and services you purchase from them. Keep in mind: too little time usually translates into too many mistakes. Let the size of your company and the complexity of your move – i.e., the number of steps that must be completed before other steps can be begun – guide you in deciding how soon is soon enough.
- Not Vetting Your Mover Completely. Office relocations are demanding. You need a mover who knows how 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 thinking about, make sure they’re legitimate. Visit 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, particularly for interstate commerce. Examine the reviews at bbb.org. to discover if any criticisms of them are on file with the Better Business Bureau. And, if at all possible, speak with other firms who’ve used them to see how well they lived up to their contractual obligations. It’s also a good idea 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 follow conventional chain-of-custody procedures.
- Not Coordinating and Communicating Sufficiently with Your Mover. Your office relocation manager must work with the project manager your moving company has assigned to see that your internal team and the moving company’s team are equally up to speed. Any changes to the schedule need to be properly relayed to all those involved, so that one problem doesn’t create all sorts of glitches and cost overruns.
Not Committing Enough Internal Staff to Your Move. The difficulty of any office relocation fairly demands that you enlist the help of your own personnel. Go for people in each department who grasp their department’s needs thoroughly and have access to applicable company records. That may not necessarily be the department head! To be honest, you’re often better off seeking the help of veteran but non-managerial staffers, as they’ll tend to submit to 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 stages can be held hostage for this or that reason. But what usually happens then is that the schedule is compressed. And that usually happens because the planning got started too late. And what happens when you attempt to make allowances for lost time? More people from your side and the mover’s side are assigned more overtime hours. Everybody starts getting in everybody else’s way. Things get sloppy. Mistakes are made. And who pays for all this? Yep. Better to devise a realistic schedule up front and stay with it.
- Not Budgeting Enough for Your Move. Frankly, it’s difficult for any company that hasn’t been engaged in a relocation before to know just what its move will finally cost. To leave that cost to happenstance, though, or to budget for it insufficiently is a big no-no! At the highest level, you need to budget for recurring real-estate costs, soft-dollar expenses for, say, employee relocation and training, capital expenses including new furniture and office equipment purchases, moving expenses, and consulting expenses for such things perhaps as interior design and engineering. The more of your needs you give a thought to at the start, the more governable the expense of your office relocation will be.
- Not Having Enough Coverage. If you’ve selected a professional relocation company of any repute, the possibility of property damage is small. Still, you be prepared. Talk with your mover about the coverage options they offer and pick the one that best accommodates your firm.
- Not Taking Care to Back Up Your Data. We needn’t call up horror stories here. Suffice it to say that while your office relocation is underway, your firm’s material records are best protected by being backed up digitally, whenever practicable. Those that can’t be digitized ought to be stored securely in a warehouse. And your digital data ought to be backed up in the cloud. Historically, losing such data or suffering its vandalism isn’t an “everyday” occurrence. But do you really want to risk it? Then, in whatever way available, back it up!
A great way to bypass these kinds of errors – or to compensate for them effectively – is to employ a moving company that has a demonstrable track record of successful office relocations. May we propose Oil Capitol Relocation right here in Tulsa and Oklahoma City? Check us out as we suggest above. Then check out our
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