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Why Relocating Your HQ can be Good for Business

Published on 06 March 2019

Why Relocating Your HQ can be Good for Business

For many business owners, a change in location can open up a lot of new opportunities for them, especially if those opportunities don't exist in their current location.

Deciding to move your headquarters is a decision that you shouldn't take lightly. Moving your HQ can be very disruptive to your business. Not only do you have to factor in the costs of your move, but you also need to calculate how long it will take for you to recover from your downtime.

However, regardless of the financial costs and the loss of productivity, many business entrepreneurs believe it is worth the risks involved and still choose to make a move to greener pastures.

Looking at the bigger picture for your company relocation can mean the potential new revenue generated from your move will far outweigh the short-term costs of uprooting and relocating your business to a new area.

Let's take a look at why business owners decide to move their HQ or entire operations:

Sourcing a better pool of employees

You may have heard the term 'A business is only as strong as its weakest employee'. For a lot of business types, this can be absolutely true! A lot of businesses actually struggle to find the most qualified or experienced staff in their local area. This is especially true for very specialised companies that need employees with a certain skill set or training.

Starting off your business venture in a small way within a rural location can also throw up staffing obstacles. It can be difficult for a company to attract the right calibre of staff if the employees face a long daily commute to work. As an employer you have to take into consideration the level of commuting time and travel expenses that your staff would be happy to tolerate.

Sometimes even the offer of a very generous salary isn't enough of a temptation to bring in the skilled personnel that you need to help your business to grow and expand. Asking prime candidates to relocate nearer to work can be out of the question for most because of their close family and social ties to the area where they live.

Should your business have grown to a level where your current location lacks a pool of suitably trained or qualified workforce, then it has become time to consider the benefits of relocating your operation to somewhere better suited with a larger local workforce or better travel infrastructure.

Your local community is on the decline

With lots of regions across the country suffering from severe austerity cuts over recent years, many once-thriving towns, cities and communities have now been left struggling. When a town or city's local economy is on the decline, it can it more difficult for businesses to grow and prosper.

A good reason to relocate your business to a more thriving area of the country is that you can actually lower your operational costs. While you may think it would be cheaper to rent offices, warehouses and workshops in declining areas, the opposite can quite often be true.

Many commercial property owners will actually put the rent up for existing businesses to help make up for the losses of income and rental charges from vacant properties. One of the most expensive overheads for most business operations is the cost of leasing their operational facilities. Any extra increases in rent can often determine whether that business remains profitable or not, especially in an economically depressed area where there may be a lack of local resources to help keep the business ticking over.

You need to expand and upgrade your facilities

Any kind of business success is great for your bottom line, but it also means that if you want to continue to be successful and take on larger projects, you will need to move to larger premises with better equipment to make your growth and expansion plans possible.

New start-ups usually are the ones that find themselves growing very rapidly during the first five years of operation. It is an ideal situation to start out small and keep your overheads low and then have the in-built flexibility to grow into larger premises and even relocate to a larger city when the need arises.

Many new small business set-ups don't have the upfront capital available to stretch to their own purpose-built facilities. So the only option is to rent offices and workplace facilities until the company outgrows their current location, then plan to make a move to larger facilities with much improved systems. It can actually be more cost-effective for a company to rent and relocate like this for the first few years of their operation that put down permanent roots in purpose-built facilities.

For a lot of growing business owners it can be a relief to plan a company relocation. They will already be well aware of what business shortcomings are currently stifling their growth. By looking at relocating to another area with much better opportunities, the business stands to gain the resources it needs to support and improve their operations further.

As a business owner you will need to clearly define what you need to see your business continue to grow and prosper. You then need to do your research to look at all viable options available to you and ensure that by relocating your risks are lower than your rewards.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of a Business Relocation

If your businesses isn't doing as well as expected and you can attribute this poor performance to its physical location, then you don't need to put up with it.

Why should you let the current confinement of your business location hold your company back? Planning a company relocation could be the answer to solve all of your business worries. However, you need to weigh up all aspects of your relocation carefully.

When you are frustrated by how your current business premises are holding you back, it can be easy to see why the grass always looks greener on the other side. However, physically moving your business to a brand new location is not an easy job. Before you jump in you should make a comprehensive list of the positive and negative points for your relocation plan.

Here are some positive and negative points for you to consider:

Possible advantages of a business relocation

Better access to a labour market: Moving to a new location that can provide you with a more specialised pool of potential employees can be a bonus. Sometimes it pays you to go to where your talent is rather than trying to get them to come to you.

Closer to your customers: Relocating your business to be closer to your customer base makes a lot of sense, especially if you started your business in some far-flung location that is miles away from civilisation. Not only are you making your business more accessible for your customers, but your staff will also benefit with shorter and cheaper commuting costs.

Raise your business presence: You can increase your company visibility and become a recognised member of a strong local business community.

Take advantage of new opportunities: By moving to a new area with a thriving socio-economic climate, you can continue to build your brand reputation within your industry while benefiting from new marketplace opportunities.

Improved working facilities: Relocating your business operation may help to improve efficiency and productivity levels because you can provide your staff with much improved and larger working facilities where they have upgraded tools and equipment to work with.

Increased cash flow: Any short-term relocation cost losses can be quickly recovered through higher productivity levels, higher sales and increases in your cash flow. Your move may open your business up to a new or larger marketplace and this can mean more cash generation for your company.

Happier staff: Relocating to a thriving area with a rich local community can provide your staff with good access to leisure, sports, arts and entertainment that can give a real boost to their mental health and quality of life.

Possible Disadvantages to consider

Losing your current workforce: If you are planning a major relocation to a different part of the country, then it will be highly unlikely that many of your current staff will be willing to relocate with you to keep their job. While you may gain new employees with the skills you need, you will have to face losing some long-standing members of staff along with their deep knowledge of your company.

Rebuilding your customer base: Depending on the type of business you run, you may have to face losing your regular customers (if they are locally based physical customers).

Relocation costs: Obviously, relocating your business isn't going to be cheap or risk free. To minimise your moving costs and reduce the risks of damage to your business and IT assets, you should place your business relocation into the hands of trained professional business relocation specialists and a very well trusted IT relocation company, such as Restore Technology.

When planning your business relocation the job needs to be mapped out well in advance and make sure you give yourself a realistic relocation time-frame to work with. If you have never planned or executed a business relocation before it would pay you to consult with Restore Technology first to get a clear idea of what is involved, especially with your IT relocation that needs very careful handling if you want your move to go as swiftly and efficiently as possible.

Developing your Business Relocation Plan

Relocating your company can be a very time-consuming task that can often be very frustrating for those key members of staff that are involved with all of the planning and actioning of the move. Before you start you should draw up a relocation checklist and make sure that you include everything on your list so that everyone concerned with the move is on the same page. Never simply commit something to memory because in the chaos of moving you can easily forget small, yet very important things.

Calculate your moving costs: Get detailed costs and quotes upfront so you can work out your budget and plan for any unexpected extra expenses that might crop up. You will need to have some flexibility built into your moving budget to be able to meet unexpected costs as quickly as possible to prevent the move being stalled or put on hold while you sort out some emergency financing.

Don't forget to factor in expenses that you may incur at the other end of your move, such as for redecoration or repairs for accidental damage sustained during the move.

Allocate the responsibilities for managing your relocation: You should appoint key members of staff to be responsible for certain aspects of your business relocation. You could choose your department heads to take control of ensuring that their department continues to work effectively, but meets with key dates and deadlines for the relocation. This will allow you to run your essential working practices and provide your customer with a good level of service with disruption kept to an absolute minimum.

Bring in an expert IT relocation company: Bringing in experts in company IT relocations, such as Restore Technology, right from the beginning will help you to plan and execute a company relocation within a realistic timeline and it will work from a very well designed plan of action.

While standard removal companies may be fine for house moves and even an office move where their only responsibilities are to move bulky and heavy office furniture, you simply cannot risk placing the movement of your company IT infrastructure into the hands of anyone else but a professional.

Restore Technology will work with you to audit your IT assets and prepare a comprehensive checklist for relocation. Our careful preparation means that every piece of equipment, cable and racking is labelled and packed correctly.

Our transport arrangements for your equipment includes using specifically designed IT packaging and protective packing cases that enable the smooth transportation from one location to the other with minimal risk of damage to your sensitive and fragile IT equipment.

Our comprehensive end-to-end decommissioning and reinstallation services can also be combined with a thorough audit to weed out any broken or obsolete IT assets that you don't want to take with you to your new business premises. Restore also offer secure end of life data destruction and redundant asset recycling services, so you can be rest assured that you can move to your new business premises free from any unnecessary or unwanted equipment clutter.

Do not hesitate to contact us to discuss your IT relocation needs. We are here to help!