When you hear serviced office providers like Telsec Business Centres talk about saving clients time and money by offering Toronto office space in a business centre environment, the question that almost immediately follows is just how does the business centre actually work and what are the benefits for tenants?
The best way to start off is by talking about the savings through shared office services. Using this model, one company does not have to pay for all of the office services on its own. Many of the overhead costs are shared with a number of other businesses at the centre. In traditional Toronto office space for lease arrangements where you rent out raw space in a large office building, your company is responsible for every cost associated with the office space you lease. This means that your purchase of utilities, maintenance, cleaning, garbage removal, telephone system, high-speed internet and other services your office requires is more expensive. Think about it in terms of buying your groceries every day at a convenience store compared to going to a large wholesale club with a group of friends and family on a monthly basis and sharing the products and the reduced prices based on bulk purchasing.
You’re not just saving on the bulk purchasing power of consumables, but also saving on the purchasing power of an office business centre in terms of the cost per square of the office space. A business centre like Telsec (who has occupied the same two floors of the Toronto Star Building at 1 Yonge Street since 1980) offers a much better chance of getting a good rental price than a company that just wants a few hundred square feet but requires much more servicing by the landlord.
Another key benefit of having office space in a business centre is that you have access to reception services. Your calls are answered by a professional receptionist who you do not have to pay for on your own. The centralized phone answering for several office tenant and virtual office clients means this cost is built into the rent and not an added expense.
Because Telsec’s office space for lease Toronto maintains shared office equipment such as the telephone system, photocopiers, network printers and even colour copiers, your business only needs to pay for when you need to utilize the equipment. You do not have to worry about the capital cost of the equipment or maintenance or ordering of supplies.
The time saved by not having to deal with utilities, maintenance and repairs, office cleaning and other office-management responsibilities is not just a savings in labour costs. It also means you can spend more time concentrating on your core business activities and thus building your business – and not maintenance of your office that is taken care of by the business centre’s support staff.
There is one more expense that many small businesses forget to consider when thinking of traditional raw office space and office space for rent Toronto in a serviced business centre. Where are you going to hold your meetings and how much will that cost? If you were to rent traditional office space, you would need to rent more square footage to have a meeting space or boardroom. More importantly, how can you justify the additional cost for a space that will not be used on a daily or even regular basis. With a serviced office space, access to meeting rooms and boardrooms in included and not an additional rental cost. This comes back to the idea that shared facilities also means the facility costs are shared among all the businesses who rent the office space from the business centre.
Before you consider traditional office space (even for team space) your company would be better served to sit down with a business centre staff member and calculate not only the long-term cost savings, but also the short-term savings of having an office space in a shared office space environment.