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Effective Planning for your Company Office Relocation

Published on 26 April 2019

Effective Planning for your Company Office Relocation

Moving out of your old offices to a more suitable location can be both exciting and incredibly scary, especially for those staff members that are put in charge of managing the office relocation.

Here Restore Technology takes a look at some of the most important things to consider when you are planning to relocate your company office. Remember that we are here to help you with your move from your IT relocation to helping you securely dispose of your redundant IT assets and equipment.

Our targeted assistance can help provide you with highly secure services across the lifespan of your IT assets.

Our services include:

• Setting up and deploying your new equipment

• Relocating your IT assets when moving your office

• Re-marketing your unwanted usable assets

• Secure destruction of redundant assets

• Recycling recovered raw materials to reduce your environmental impact

Restore Technology has the scope and expertise required to provide what we believe are the most secure, sustainable and efficient IT lifecycle services in the UK. We have helped many thousands of businesses of all sizes with our IT relocation services, so can speak from our own long history and experience when talking about your important relocation considerations.

To move or not to move

An eye-opening survey conducted by E.ON found that moving office premises is the second most stressful task that business owners and operators have to deal with. As a result, it was found that a whopping 78% of companies actually stall or delay their plans for moving, instead opting to remain working in unsuitable, cramped and costly facilities just to avoid the actual stress involved in moving.

As a person responsible for your move, don't let the stress of moving put you off. As long as you plan well ahead and keep the disruption to a minimum your move will be good for the future of your company.

Work out your relocation budget

Before you can put any of your moving plans in motion you need to know how much your office relocation is going to cost. The costs of moving can quickly add up and budgets overspent, so always plan a little leeway with your budget to cover for unexpected issues such as delays, equipment breakdowns and replacements.

Here are some considerations that you may not have thought of but that we have seen many times in our experience:

• Office reinstating and snagging costs: When you vacate your office, depending on your lease or contract agreement, you may be responsible for putting right any physical changes you made to the office or to leave it in a reasonable state of repair. These costs may include deep cleaning and redecorating the office.

• Consult with an experienced relocations company: If this is your first company office relocation, there can be many large costs that you can miss entirely or you can underestimate. It can be a good idea to consult with an experienced relocations expert such as Restore Technology well in advance of your move to get a handle on the full cost.

• Is your new office space ready for your move? Your main focus will be on getting everything packed and moved from your office, but you also need to make sure that your new office location is set up and ready to receive your equipment. You should take some time to plan your new office layout and ensure that you have the right power, IT and telecommuting infrastructure in place. It will be nearly impossible to conduct any refurbishments or alterations after your move without it causing major disruption to your working procedures.

There are so many hidden costs within all of these considerations. It can help to work with a company that will do a complete fit-out of your new offices so that everything goes as smoothly as possible with your move.

Set up an internal communications network

It is very important for you to know which members of your staff will make up the chain of command for your move. What is also important is for them to know who else is in the loop and have a way of communicating directly with each other.

This will save a lot of time and headaches because it means that plans can be shared easily with your 'moving team' and any changes, problems or alerts arising at any stage can be quickly addressed without having to go directly through you each time. Ensuring all of your key moving team remain on the same page is crucial here.

Work out who needs to know that you are moving

Obviously, all of your staff will be aware of your office move, but you need to have a plan in place to reach others that need to know of your relocation.

We are talking here about your company clients or customers, your business suppliers, contractors, local council, HMRC and Companies House, your bank, creditors, insurance company, equipment leasing company, as well as your utility suppliers etc.

There are easy ways to keep your business clients or customers and suppliers updated about your move through:

• Customer email newsletters

• Social Media pages

• Putting a notice on your website

• Add a change of address card or note to your orders

• Add a message to your company invoices

You will also need to update your company stationery as well as your business website and email footers. Don't forget to edit your details on Google Maps to make sure that people don't get sent to an empty office after your relocation.

Review your office furniture needs

Will you be taking all of your existing office furniture with you? Planning an office relocation can be a great opportunity to conduct a bit of essential housekeeping. You can take this chance to clear out any worn out or broken pieces of furniture, or even look at replacing everything entirely.

While it may be a costly option to choose to set up your new office with brand new office furniture, it can actually make your office relocation a lot easier.

Moving into an office with brand new furniture will give you the benefit of knowing that you should have many years of trouble-free use from your furniture. Taking along your old furniture with you could mean needing to look at replacing it sooner rather than later, which could be more costly in the long term when you add up the furniture relocation costs and eventual replacement.

Should you choose to leave your existing office furniture behind, you can look at having it re-marketed. There are plenty of new startup companies, social enterprises and community groups with tight budgets that would be interested in purchasing previously owned office furniture.

IT relocation considerations

Your business systems all work on a delicate infrastructure made up of your IT equipment assets and data servers. How you relocate your IT and electrical equipment is incredibly important because you will want it decommissioned carefully, transported safely, and recommissioned correctly at the other end.

Your IT equipment is a remarkable puzzle of data connections that are critical to the running of your business. For this reason, you don't want to put this aspect of your move into the wrong hands.

It is essential that you take special steps and precautions for the safe removal and reinstallation of your equipment, especially with regard to your company servers that are particularly delicate in nature and have to be handled with great care.

Desktop audits

Each of your staff's desktop setups will be highly individual and unique to each user. This means that moving your office desktop computers will involve more than simply dismantling and rebuilding them in a random order at your new office location.

Have your desktop computers audited with Restore Technology. We will carefully label and document each piece of equipment before dismantling and packing for your move. Once moved to your new office, we will then recommission each desktop to leave them exactly as they were before your move. This includes connecting them back up to your network infrastructure.

Because of the sensitive nature of the data that your desktop computers hold, you need to make sure that their removal and recommissioning is taken care of by a team of security-cleared engineers, such as our expert IT relocation team at Restore Technology.

Your company Data Centres & Servers

Your servers contain critical data that needs to be handled very carefully. Often made from delicate or fragile components, your physical server relocation needs to be done with minimal downtime and packed in special server-specific packaging that helps to reduce the risk of damage and breakages during transportation.

Your server equipment is not something that can be easily dismantled and left sitting around for a long time. Data failures can result from incorrect storage and mishandling as well as from the risks of static build up causing internal damage.

Protecting your data

You have a duty by law to protect the sensitive data that your company holds. When planning to move your IT infrastructure you will not only be moving your physical IT assets but also your confidential data. You cannot risk any of your data being lost through a careless data breach while moving your data storage devices.

This is why you need to put the safety of protecting your data into the hands of industry experts. Restore Technology will carefully audit and document every single piece of your IT equipment and data bearing assets. Each asset is then tracked all the way through your move – this means that you will remain aware of their location at all times.

Our tried and tested high-security IT relocation services means that you will remain confident that all of your sensitive data is being held secure throughout our end-to-end relocation service.

End of life IT disposal

It is pretty much inevitable that you will discover some data-bearing IT equipment that will need disposing of before your office relocation. There is little point moving old, redundant and broken IT equipment to your new offices if they provide zero value to your business operations.

Here is where Restore Technology can help! As part of our IT relocation services, you can also book us to safely remove and dispose of your redundant assets that have reached the end of their workable life.

By using our services you can actually recoup some of the value of your spent IT equipment through our thorough recycling processes. If your old equipment cannot be reused effectively, we can offer you secure recycling to extract valuable raw materials from your equipment to help you reduce your costs further.

Restore Technology is here for you

Using our secure logistics and our security-vetted IT engineers, Restore Technology is trusted by thousands of businesses each year to handle their office moves.

Whether you are moving to a completely different location that is miles away from your original base, or you are simply moving your office within your existing workplace to make better use of your available space, we can help!

We will ensure minimal disruption to your business processes and deliver a smooth and seamless relocation of your precious IT assets and equipment to your new location.

If you’re planning a one-off relocation, or have an ongoing demand for moves and changes within your organisation, we can help.

Feel free to contact our friendly team to discuss your IT relocation needs. We can work with you to create a bespoke solution for your office relocation.