Business moving is as involved as the process of moving your home to a new location. There are big and bulky furniture, expensive electronics to pack, and many rooms full of knick-knacks needing careful packing and labelling. Careful labelling is crucial because you don’t want to turn everything upside down when you are looking for just your modem and router to connect up. Generally, the time at your disposal to pack up an entire business can be really short since it can be a huge challenge to shut down your operations for a whole week or more just to pack up. Hiring budget movers or a commercial moving service can significantly lessen your burden and make the move itself more enjoyable for you and your employees.
To help you further with the process of business moving, we have culled out the following tips:
Table of Contents
Plan Early
Early planning is a crucial step in commercial moving since there are several major and minor details you want to work out. Starting the whole process of planning at least one month before the planned date for moving is ideal. Hold several meetings with your employees and determine who will be responsible for what. Prepare a checklist detailing the responsibilities. If the same employees are available in your location to make them responsible for overseeing the unpacking of they have got packed. In this case, your budget movers can be instructed to mark the packages with the initials of respective individuals making the whole process of setting up things in the new location a lot easier.
Have A Co-Ordinator
Designate one member of your staff to co-ordinate the entire moving. This way the business owner can invest his/her time in more productive/important aspects of the business and one individual can provide all the updates needed about the moving process. The commercial moving agency, budget movers, all other employees will, in turn, work with and report to the coordinator so that he can keep track of all the minute details in real-time. If this is a huge challenge ask the moving agency to designate one of their staff to handle this part of the exercise.
Research Your Options For A Moving Company
You may need to find multiple moving companies and negotiate with them before you can zero in on one company to work with. Prepare a checklist detailing your needs and discuss thoroughly with your commercial moving company at least 2 weeks before the planned move. This way you will not have any last-minute surprises and things can potentially move without glitches. Look for companies that can handle an end to end job for you including packing, loading, moving, unloading and putting everything back in their designated places in the new location under the supervision of the co-ordinator and your employees.
Keep all discussions in your office since the moving company representative has the opportunity to gain a clear understanding of your needs.
Check out reviews of the company you plan to work with and ensure that they have appropriate licenses and insurance to execute the task for you.
Each Employee Packs Up His/Her Desk
With the help of the moving company, instruct each employee to pack his/her desk and give a cut off time for the individual and the agency to accomplish this. This way, you can avoid last-minute hassles and potential losses.
Your It Is Crucial
When you are moving an entire office to a new location, your IT department should prepare itself well in advance for the move. Let them prepare a draft plan of how and when they will pack important technical equipment like servers, phone and computers including your internet and data plans. This is a part of the moving job that cannot be delegated to the movers and your own employees may need to handle it with packing assistance provided by the moving agency. Ensure appropriate connectivity including internet and data at the new location well ahead of your moving schedule so that your workflow does not suffer.
Address Changes
Notify address change to all concerned with the effective date and organize all printed stationery with the new address so that you can start right away once you move to the new location.
Access And Timing
Check out all access and timing issues at the new location. If you are moving into a shared office space, access to unload your belongings may be restricted to non-office hours. Similarly, consider any constraint that operates in moving your belongings to higher floors. If you have to use the stairs are they wide enough for men and material to pass comfortably. Are you allowed to use the lifts to move material and if so, during what hours?
Conclusion
Your office relocation can be easy and hassle-free when you plan ahead and follow these tips.