First and foremost, you will need to get your communications up and running. This means moving the telephone and computer systems and having them hooked backed up by professionals. In the Atlanta market, for telephone systems, I recommend Robert Brock’s company, Square 1 Technology. For computers and the network, I obviously recommend my company, Carceron.

As far as moving your office is concerned, you can do it yourself of course (that’s what we did, along with an army of youth volunteers). But you may want to outsource that part, especially if you’re a bit bigger (2000 sq ft. or more). In that case, Debbie Ponder from Suddath Relocation Systems is who I would use in the Atlanta market. Regardless of who you use to move or how, you should have a space plan for the new office. A space plan is a layout map of the office that shows where every piece of furniture is going to go and how it will be positioned. It’s especially helpful to have measurements of your furniture relative to each room’s dimensions. also be mindful of the position of the door into the office relative to your desk. “L” shaped desks may not be able to go into the office just how you want it based on the position of the door into the office. If you’re getting any additional new furniture for the office, make sure to coordinate with your furniture rep on the move in as well.

You also might have a lot of loose ends to tie up here. Such as:

• Getting office and server room locks re-keyed and disseminating those keys to relevant employees
• Signage (reception area, parking, etc.)
• Touch painting after move in (hopefully not)
• Security system operational
• Interior Decoration (hanging plaques, awards, etc. – adding some plant life to soften the place up a little)
• Stocking the kitchen / break room
• Commercial Insurance is updated for the new property and you have a certificate of insurance into the landlord / lender

If you brain storm with your staff over everything that needs to get done from the very beginning, then put that list where everyone can see it (in LifeTick or SharePoint for example), you should have a very successful and relatively pain-free move.

Moving an office is a process accompanied by so many possible emotions: joy, dread, relief, stress, and more – that it can seem like you need a therapist just to deal with the move… for everyone in your company. After all, you still have a business to run, and if you’re reading this, you’re most likely not a Fortune 500 company that can outsource all of the planing and execution that goes into it; you’re most likely doing it all yourself. So how do you run a business while moving somewhat painlessly -  change the oil while driving car, per se? I am about to tell you.

Timing and the Tenant Rep

You need to give yourself as much time as possible, 6-12 months ideally. The less time you have the more likely you’ll be forced into something you don’t want due to less time to search for vacant properties and less time to negotiate the deal. And let’s talk about negotiating that deal. Two Words: Tenant Representative. You’ve most likely used a residential real estate agent to purchase and home, it is doubly or more important to secure a tenant rep for your commercial space. Here’s how a tenant rep benefits you directly:

• They are free (they are paid a commission by the landlord)
• They have access to commercial MLS (multiple listing) systems that provide real time information on vacant properties which helps you narrow your search based on pre-defined criteria like:
  • Access to interstate(s)
  • Power & Data Cabling
  • Office Layout
  • Class A vs B vs C (think quality)
  • 1st Floor vs any floor
• They are master negotiators (or should be), protecting your interests from the landlord and negotiating the lease for and with you.

We used Bob & Rob Hill of Hill Corporate Partners. They walked us through our 56 page lease in painstaking detail and knew things that needed to be changed right away that I would have never know to ask for. That is the biggest reason you need to use a tenant rep.

Some other notes when considering properties:

• When you walk through your final choice of office to develop the “buildout and refresh” scope of work for the landlord, make sure to so in full lighting. When we did ours, the power to our unit was turned off due to small flood in the adjacent office suite. So we viewed the space with our BlackBerry video lights. While this did not really affect the buildout that we needed done, it did significantly impact what we asked for in terms of bringing the unit back to an acceptable move in condition (refresh). In our case it was painting walls, peeling wallpaper in the bathroom, carpet stains, and other cosmetic blemishes. No worries. We handled it ourselves. It was just a pain that could have been avoided.
• If you need any buildout work done, make sure that you have you, your tenant rep, the landlord and the architect (usually hired by the landlord) in the room and go over precisely what your recommendations are and arrive at a consensus on the final total square footage. In most offices this might be pretty straight forward, but because our new office has a curved front, many of the of the interior walls are at weird angles which made calculating square footage accurately a challenge.
• Be extremely detailed in your scope of work for both the buildout and refresh. Insist on meeting with the property or construction manager personally to go through each item so that there is no confusion.
• Check the functionality of everything mechanical, like:
  • Doors fully closing and latching
  • Sinks work correctly and don’t leak
  • Toilet Flushes
  • Light Fixtures all work
  • Ceiling tiles are all intact and not cracked

Step 1: Outsource Personal Weakness

I learned early on in business that I did not need to handle book keeping, and, a littler later on, tactical marketing (web sites, direct mail, etc.).  Reconciling bank statements, taxes, etc. are best handled by someone else, I quickly deduced. My undergrad training was in Psychology. I never took a single business class, so this was a no brainer. What’s been harder to let go of is marketing. My background in psychology has served me in understanding the clent and how to market to them in terms of messaging, but other tactical elements such as graphic and web design, collateral design, are all done better by the artsy types who can give your business a more polished look.

As Carceron grew, I began to realize that I wasn’t even the best computer technician and worked quickly to divest myself from that role to allow other, more capable, people run the day to day support operations of the business.

My next area to personally outsource? …Sales.

As I have grown the business, it was hard to see how tactical of a role sales really was until I had done it for a while. Now I realize that it is simply a numbers game. It’s about generating more leads (marketing and prospecting) and attaining better conversion rates (sales and sales training). I firmly believe that I could teach just about any good sales person how to sell what we do because the principals of selling are the pretty the same in any business. My training would give him the information needed to apply those principals..

In summary, you can outsource some of your personal responsibilities to outside vendors or employees. Evolving business owners and overwhelmed management alike must outsource their personal weakness in this way to get precious time back and/or to increase the quality of the area to be outsourced. This was the case of Jay, an operations manager for one of our clients. Jay ran the day to day operations of his company’s 16+ locations in addition to supporting its near 100 end users, while Carceron simply supported his server farm. Eventually he “cried uncle” and let Carceron take over all of their IT operations which gave him back 15-20 hours per week that he was spending on just supporting end users.

Step 2: Outsource Business Processes & Functions

As your business grows, you eventually see other areas to outsource to save money and/or improve quality. Some things make more sense than others. As a rule of thumb, don’t outsource anything that interferes directly with your client relationships… hold that sacred.

Here are some common areas of the business to outsource and why you should:

• Book Keeping: Save time, Accuracy, Cheaper than a full time employee (depends on the size of business and transaction volume)
• Payroll: Accuracy, IRS Compliance
• Human Resources: Compliance, Compliance, Compliance
• Marketing & PR: Social Media needs daily attention, a firm can do it cheaper than a full time employee
• Shipping / Delivery: What would it cost you to maintain a fleet of vehicle and drivers vs the cost of using a local courier or FedEx?
• Managed Services Provider (MSP): MSPs don’t get sick or take vacations, MSPs don’t need to be equiped or need benefits, MSPs cost about 1/2 the salary of a full time IT employee, click here to see a lot more reasons

Much of outsourcing is accomplished through the use of information technology which is an enabler towards issues like compliance, business process etc. Make sure that you understand the impacts on your IT infrastructure of anything that you plan to outsource before doing so.

You’ll also want to make sure that you have a good working relationship with all of your outsource vendors, constantly communicating your expectations.

Here are some other resources on outsourcing, well worth the read:

• 8 Reason Why Outsourcing Fails
• What causes outsourcing failures?

Off-shoring

When many people hear the word outsourcing, visions of call centers in a far away country pop up. Bare in mind that you can outsource without off-shoring. Put differently, off-shoring is 1 technique of outsourcing. When and why should you use this technique? In many cases it almost always comes back to saving money. Labor pools in other countries are generally cheaper and vast. It can also come about due to of lack people in country that have the necessary skills to carry out specialized kinds of work. This has been Microsoft’s argument for years – that University’s simply aren’t spitting out enough application developers (Watch the Bill Gates Testimonial to the Senate regarding this).  However, there are some trade offs:

• Language barrier: Many people get frustrated with call center operators where English is a second language. Also things can get lost in translation – this happens often for company’s that outsource software development abroad where misunderstandings about the scope of work often arise.
• External Politics: In the current state of this economy, where unemployment is so high, you risk a PR backlash by sending work overseas
• Internal Politics: Offshoring can have a direct impact on moral due to an “am I next?” mindset

Personally, I have not seen the need to offshore, however, I think it may become inevitable in order to compete unless legislation is passed to limit it somehow. As I am not an economist, I can’t say either way if that would be a bad thing or not. If we are of the mindset that we are now a global market place, would increased (presumably more restrictive) legislation help or hinder us? I simply don’t know…

• Why Offshore Outsourcing Projects Fail