Does Your Online Business Really Need an Office Building?
You see this happen every two decades, or so, something in business becomes obsolete, and even though the trend quite clearly shows this, it remains the elephant in the room. The need for brick and mortar office blocks and commercial real estate is becoming less and less relevant. Especially as entrepreneurs are so innovative nowadays, that working out of an actual office seems rigid, old-fashioned and quite cumbersome. E-commerce and other online businesses have shown the markets that the cost of maintaining a free-standing outweighs the benefits. The bottom line is, online businesses now have systems whereby communication, orders, negotiations, signing deals and distribution contracts can all be done through online cloud software. So what do you need to do to replace the need for an office?
Present well
Running a web-based business is the exciting new trend from cloud-based home businesses and entrepreneurs around the world are turning to as the staple of modernity. Maybe as little as a decade ago, you need a real-world presence to be taken seriously as a business, as you couldn’t turn to investors are say that you only exist on the internet; you’d get laughed out the room. However, with a professional website design, pages and pages of information about what it is you do, your products, services, history, testimonials, and building of a reliable reputation, online businesses have now got more consumers chewing at their bandwidth than real-world businesses have people walking through their doors. Walk-in traffic numbers are abysmal to e-business click figure, mainly due to accessibility.
Employee efficiency and contract a third-party
Online businesses don’t need as many employees as office block-based companies do because each employee is expected to get the majority of tasks done online and hold many skill sets at the same time. One employee can now perform market research by studying analytics, engage in customer feedback, devise a marketing strategy, and present it to the boss, all on their own. The beauty of modern business is that by being efficient, cutting costs and maximizing profits has never been easier. Getting orders is no problem for most, but the challenge comes in manufacturing products, storing and distributing them to consumers and shopping stores. That’s where businesses like armstrong steel corporation come in, with the sole purpose of building strong steel structures, independent startups working from home to large e-commerce corporations can do all three. As point-of-contact is done through social media or via the company website, employees can communicate orders and queries with each other on a cloud system from home or in a coffee shop. You’re able to satisfy customers’ needs with updates and change products by communicating with the third-party manufacturer.
Legitimacy and vanity
In today’s world, you don’t need a real office to be seen as a legitimate business. Some might say that spending so much money on desks and computers for cubicles in an office is beyond the point of childish vanity when you have all of that at home. It’s important to acknowledge that the virtual office performs just as much if not more tasks than a real office can. With integrated customer service programs and the ability to communicate with staff in real-time, responding to feedback directly to consumers has never been easier. Phone calls are a thing of the past; customers want information of updates, news, company events and presentation to be done online via social media. Investors no longer need to come and see what your office looks like, they want to see the infrastructure you have online and how that translates into the real world e.g. manufacturing and distribution as aforementioned.
