Detective | Smartphones are so ubiquitous that you still need a local landline number to start a business.
Pan Shiyi, chairman of SOHO China, posted a weibo on January 23, 2020, saying that the first half and second half of Wangjing SOHO are simply ice and fire: in the first half of the year, there were several companies rushing to rent, and in the second half of the year, a company renting tens of thousands of square meters, originally the decoration, furniture, and equipment were all done, due to the drastic changes in the market environment, they could only withdraw the lease, leave the furniture and equipment, and deal with the departure of employees.
This is the risk chain of doing the office leasing business in a drastically changing environment: the company wastes huge rent and hardware costs when the business encounters bottlenecks or fatal blows, which is worse.
And not only large companies, large businesses have this risk, detective editors have seen a crowdspace with only one small building, once because a large customer wants to settle in, the golden floor, the location of the small "retail" companies have rushed to the corner of the building, the result of half a year passed, the big customer did not come, the golden floor has been empty, the popularity of the building declined, after a short time, the co-creation space transformation to do parent-child education investment.
So, it's time to keep an eye on the "virtual office."
Under the impact of the epidemic, their business has not fallen but has risen
"Lujiazui's office environment is fascinating, put down the mail and phone, and the Huangpu River and HSBC are outside the window. Looking at the century-old Shanghai on the other side of the river, the bustling city in front of you, this Shanghai where the East and the West, tradition and modernity can never be separated, will give people unlimited motivation. A person in charge of Jiebao Foreign Firm (China) Co., Ltd. said.
Jiebao Is an import and export company engaged in pharmaceutical equipment and packaging consumables, established before the epidemic in 2019, its customers include the world's top 200 raw material companies for more than 100 years, and BD Medical, S&N, JNJ, Midland and other top international pharmaceutical companies. Because it is a sales-led startup, it prefers to have both service costs and office environments, comparing multiple co-working brands such as Naked Valley, WeWork, and Kr Space.
Jiebao & Co. finally chose a well-established foreign-funded co-working service provider, Servcorp Hongtu (hereinafter referred to as Servcorp), because, compared with WeWork's Internet code farming atmosphere, the company's Hong Kong shareholders prefer the business style and services of Citi Building provided by Servcorp, of course, the temptation to overlook Lujiazui is the most irresistible.
Due to the company's expansion needs and the global business coverage of Servcorp, Jiebao & Co. soon won the service of No. 1 Beijing Road in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, and at the same time, it was also possible to use their meeting room in Beijing's East Third Ring Road to facilitate employees to travel in the three places and negotiate business with customers in a high-quality business environment. At the same time, incoming and outgoing phone calls, mail, and letters can also be received in many places, and Servcorp has a dedicated secretary for Jiebao Foreign Firm, which will not be overlooked or made mistakes.
(Servcorp Hong Kong)
In summary, Jiebao used two services provided by Servcorp: shared office + virtual office, flexible allocation of office resources, balance of cost input and business activity environment, help the company seize the business opportunities of medical device import and export under the epidemic, and to a certain extent, avoid the impact risk of the epidemic on the physical office, so that the company's business increment reached 200%.
As a result, the risk chain of office business has also become a chain of revenue: the customer is good, and the office operation service provider can be good. At a time when direct competitors were mired in losses, such as WeWork's $844 million loss in the third quarter of 2021, Regus's total loss in fiscal year 2021 was $172 million, and indirect competitors such as Wangjing SOHO were in trouble with major customers returning leases and re-attracting business, Servcorp's total profit (after tax) in fiscal 2021 was 28.5 million.
Virtual office, what exactly is virtual?
When talking about virtual offices, people may think of the concept of "AI", such as Hamilton City, Canada, a company has made a 3D digital office for employees, it is very similar to the online game virtual life, just let people's office communication in the virtual world, for employees working from home to increase some sense of belonging and communication interest. Perhaps, the future metaverse can realize virtual office in the sense of AI, but this is not the "virtual office" we are going to talk about here today.
Servcorp calls its "virtual office" business "Coworking Plus" or "Coworking Plus".
First, Servcorp has physical office spaces around the world, operating in a shared mode and a service room office.
As mentioned earlier, unlike many shared spaces that focus on finding relatively cheap locations, simplifying services and office environments to reduce costs and absorb small startups, Servcorp chooses the core locations of first-tier cities, such as the Wealth Finance Center (FFC) in Beijing, where the two office locations are east third ring, that is, the office buildings of Samsung China at its peak, and the China Trade Center on Jianguo Road, adjacent to the famous SKP, customers have certain thresholds, mostly finance, headhunting, lawyers and other fields, or medicine, Clothing, the best in the traditional industry, they all have more business communication activities.
At present, Servcorp has more than 150 shared spaces around the world.
Second, based on the operation of the "physical space", Servcorp launched a virtual office as early as 1980. Although it is called virtual, the services used are real: including local exclusive numbers answered by a dedicated person, prominent business addresses, IT and telecommunications resource support, exclusive secretarial services, and office locations in 150 business districts around the world, which can use office space or meetings according to temporary or travel office needs (Servcorp virtual office products include 60 hours of mobile workstations per month, which can be used when traveling to independent offices 3 days a month).
To put it simply, employees do not have to go to the office to punch in nine to five, the company saves this part of the fixed cost, but can still use the space, manpower, IT services provided by Servcorp according to the needs, with a small investment, which is equivalent to the price of a cup of coffee a day, you can have your own CBD office in the global CBD.
(Shanghai UGWCC Plaza)
Why are smartphones so ubiquitous today, and you still need a dedicated local landline number?
Some people may ask: if employees can work remotely from home, why rent virtual space services? Can't I send and receive messages on a mobile phone? Temporary meeting or office to find a Starbucks rubbing a net, actually buy a cup of coffee is not fragrant?
In fact, for the media, especially some self-media is really like this, interview writing manuscripts are not necessarily office, the topic will be selected in the café, as for the façade of their own company is the manuscript, the manuscript is well written, and it is theoretically feasible to walk and chat with customers on the road.
But many industries can't do that. Jiebao said that companies should provide cost-effective services to customers, but also provide a trustworthy space. They serve the pharmaceutical industry, the pharmaceutical industry attaches great importance to professionalism, risk control, not to mention the formal business meeting arranged in the noisy café is simply unimaginable, just say that in the early contact, give the customer a business card, let the customer call a private mobile phone number contact, the other party 80% turned around and threw the business card into the trash can.
The more high-end, transnational business customers may pay more attention to the details of the cooperation process in the communication process, detective editors in the past when interviewing a Nordic foreign firm CEO, the other party PR will even ask some dress details, not to mention potential customers who have not yet established a sense of trust. Therefore, a local real secretary, able to answer the local exclusive landline number in time, as well as fluent bilingual ability, is often the starting point for customer trust, externally, can improve the success rate of customer acquisition, internally, help the company's recruitment.
A good starting point coupled with a good follow-up business negotiation and office environment, in some industries, means that the business is half successful. For example, there is a garment factory in Suzhou, doing high-end fabric business, hoping to expand the scope of business in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, found Servcorp, rented a virtual office service in Shanghai, usually do not need to go to Shanghai office, but the new business calls, mail, etc. can be handled by the service party, and there are customers who then go to Shanghai "office" to negotiate, and also successfully expand the business.
Looking at the legal profession, lawyers are actually a very strong industry, so some young lawyers will be attached to a law firm, but they will take orders alone, so many lawyers will choose the services of virtual offices, but also give their potential customers a professional and powerful endorsement.
Interestingly, companies that rent Servcorp virtual offices do not necessarily need to look for business outside, because Servcorp's customers are relatively high-quality, and Servcorp has also built social networks for them, so customers can also find and digest resources internally.
Only when there is a lizi can there be face
On the surface, Servcorp's customers rent a "façade", but in essence a service:
For example, the exclusive secretary must answer the customer's phone at the same time, must be the first time, accurately report the customer's company and related information, in case of a string of desks, the probability will become a major business accident. For example, many companies need a stable, fast and smooth global network, which can directly maintain contact and communication with customers.
But the quality of service is to be heavily invested to support: for example, as we all know, the rent of the golden business district is very expensive - the per capita use area of Servcorp customers is 12 square meters, which is about 3 times the industry standard, of course, maintaining the CBD-level office environment, the operating costs to be invested are also very expensive, please respond quickly, multi-skilled bilingual secretaries to pay high salaries, layout the global smooth IT service network, but also to spend money.
Speaking of the usual operational support services, an employee in some shared spaces may have to serve 500-600 people, but Servcorp will have 3-5 employees on a floor, and each person can serve 30-50 customers.
So how does Servcorp reduce operating costs and give customers a "cup of coffee a day" price?
The first is this "shared space + service office + virtual office" model, which is equivalent to maximizing the value of fixed inputs (venue, manpower, IT), and launching different services and a variety of different profit model combinations at a lower marginal cost on the basis of resources being able to operate at full capacity.
The second is to use technological capabilities to increase human efficiency. For example, to support the exclusive secretarial service, is actually a set of Servcorp self-developed IT system, its principle is that the front-end and operators cooperate to purchase the number segment, and then you can complete the setting within 5 minutes, assign exclusive numbers to customers, back-end support level, the system can quickly identify the number of the company, customers can instantly edit any exclusive greetings on the client, and ensure the accuracy of manual replies.
Conversely, as mentioned earlier, in 2021, famous co-working brands such as WeWork and Regus are in losses. In fact, before the epidemic, a number of domestic shared spaces had problems with the business model. This shows that finding cheap locations, sacrificing quality and service, and using low-cost large-scale no threshold to recruit small companies does not work, the company has become a second landlord, there is no need to mention what incubator, capital to go out of the pit is normal.
Value and future, not only façade
While the epidemic has impacted the real economy, it has also changed the way our society organizes and collaborates like never before. For example, many companies have begun to try to let employees work remotely from home, but also found that while the external environment is highly changing, virtual office is not only a passive way to respond to the epidemic, but also a way to actively embrace change, such as the company's new business, you can use the virtual office model to reduce input costs, although it is good, do not do well, can also reduce losses, or leave room for transformation.
(Servcorp Sydney Gateway Office)
Therefore, rather than saying that Servcorp's virtual office is "virtual", it is not that it is "flexible office", for enterprises, it means stripping away non-essential office costs, including fixed scenarios, some administrative personnel, and then purchasing office resources and services from Servcorp as needed. For individuals, relying on the virtual office product, you can have a strong business office branch service and administrative support in a short period of time, and slowly expand your business in a short period of time.
These are the needs highlighted by the epidemic, but not the needs born of the epidemic, it is a new organization and collaboration model that will inevitably be born, and it is also an inevitable trend for enterprises to allocate resources.