Business demands can change on a daily basis, one day you might want to work remote, and the next day you might need your own office space. Serviced offices offer businesses the flexibility to adjust their space to their schedule while also providing them the resources required to stay competitive. Although having a spot at a serviced office facility offers a multitude of advantages, these types of spaces may not suit every business’s needs. This list of advantages and disadvantages will help you decide which option is the best fit for you.

What is a Serviced Office?

Serviced offices provide renters with fully furnished and equipped office spaces that are available to rent on a pay-as-you-go basis. This means you can choose to pay day to day, month to month, yearly, or anywhere in between. The rent you pay for the office will include, desks, chairs, access to meeting room spaces and a cafe area, WIFI, printers, T.Vs and more. A serviced office building is managed by an office provider who rents individual offices to other businesses.

A serviced office building can offer co-working spaces, private offices, executive office suites, meeting rooms, boardrooms and more.

In comparison, with regular office spaces, you would need to purchase all your furniture and equipment separately, and will normally be required to commit to a long-term lease. Serviced offices provide you with a package deal where you have access to the space, tools and support you need all for one price – without the long-term commitment.

6 Advantages of Serviced Offices:

Prestigious location and address

With Telsec serviced offices, you have access to a prestigious downtown Toronto location, without needing to pay typical Toronto rent prices. Your business’s location will set the tone for how clients percieve you, so having an office in Toronto’s Financial District works to enhance your professional image. It not only looks good to potential customers, but it can also make a good impression on vendors, prospective employees, and financiers necessary for your business’s growth.

Back-office support

Most serviced offices come with a professional staff employed to provide you with office and secretary services to keep your back office running efficiently.
These staffers provide services such as:

• • A professional receptionist
  • Secretarial services
  • IT support
  • Office and building maintenance
  • Cleaning staff
  • Plus other services

You will be able to utilize these services without having to hire your own personnel. Not having to hire and train your own back-office support staff leaves you with more time to concentrate on growing your business.

Facilities and support ready to go

Serviced office space generally comes with the infrastructure that is ready to use, including things such things as a:

• Telephone system
• High speed internet connection
• Smart T.V
• Shower Facilities
• Business equipment like fax machines, photocopiers and network printers

Most of the equipment found in business centres is of better quality than what most small business would normally be able to afford. Frequent upgrades and updates mean that tenants have access to the latest state-of-the-art technologies. In most cases, utilities such as electricity, water and heat are included in the rent. Most also have a kitchen area for office tenants and their staff to grab a beverage (often complimentary coffee and tea) and a microwave oven to heat up their snack or lunch. This type of ready-to-go office means you can move in and get to work within hours, instead of weeks.

Simple user-friendly office rental agreements

Leasing a traditional office space often involves getting legal assistance to read and understand all the terms and conditions. Typically, the rental agreements for serviced office spaces are written in plain English because they do not need to be complicated with ‘legalese’ that the average business owner does not understand. Most business centre owners have designed leases to be user friendly and avoid unnecessary terms and clauses typically found in commercial office leases. They understand the needs of small businesses to have simple agreements that do not require legal advice and can be signed in a short period of time, allowing for fast move-in.

Length of rental agreement and flexibility for growth

Not every business can know where it will be in the future, so signing a long-term lease may not be beneficial. Most serviced office business centres allow for leases to be structured over weeks, months or even one-year or two-year terms for maximum savings and flexibility.
Start-ups and small businesses that are on the verge of growth will require the ability to quickly accommodate for rapid expansion. If a business signs a long term-lease for a small office space in October but quickly finds themselves expanding by November, they will require a larger office since their current office no longer suits their needs. However, since they already signed the lease, they will need to delay their expansion until their contract is finished. The business may choose to break the lease early, but this could come at a costly price.
Additionally, moving offices can be time consuming, and expensive, as you need to hire movers and update all official documents with the new address.
With Telsec Business Centres, tenants have been known to be in one office on Monday and be in a larger office or in multiple offices on Tuesday to accommodate for growth and increased staffing. The reverse can also be applied. If a small business needs less space, it can easily move to smaller office accommodations within the same office complex, without changing their business address or telephone number.

Networking opportunities

Serviced offices give you the unique opportunity to network and cross-sell with a variety of other businesses residing within the same facility. Often the networking is not so much structured networking – it is meeting that guy from the office down the hall from you when you are getting your morning coffee in the shared kitchen facilities, or when you are picking up a printing job from the printer room. But it is not just those chance encounters that facilitate networking. Many office business centres who offer serviced office facilities have formal networking events that are often organized by the tenants themselves in order to grow their contacts and their business.

4 Disadvantages of Serviced Offices

Some people will tell you that using serviced offices can have some minor disadvantages. Here are some examples that we have heard and how we addressed them.

You may not be able to extend your personal brand and corporate style to your office space

While this may be true, not being able to feature your brand at the reception area is not usually seen as a major concern. Some serviced office spaces allow for some type of identifying signage on the interior of the individual office that a business occupies, but that usually requires consultation and approval.

There is less visibility for your business as it is unlikely to appear on the building’s main lobby directory

This is no longer true of serviced offices that are located in buildings with digital directories in the main lobby of the building. In fact, some business centres are able to have virtual office clients listed on the main directory.

Shared facilities may not be available when you need them

Yes, sometimes shared facilities such as a boardroom may not be available when you need it, but this is the exception and not the rule. By advance booking one of multiple boardrooms or meeting rooms that the facility has, you are assured that it will be available for your use at the time you need it.

Rental costs may be more expensive over the long-term for larger companies with more than 30 staff

This may be true, depending on the individual serviced office provider and the available space. However, if an office space provider has large team space and other offices available, the provider may indeed be able to accommodate a company with over 30 employees while keeping costs low. Considering what services are required – such as photocopying and network printing – the reduced capital cost savings could offset the cost of rent. In other words, with a serviced office, you only pay for the space you need and the services you use. Unlike some conventional leases (where you also must pay for your electricity, cleaning staff and hire a person to manage the facilities), all fixed costs of your serviced office are covered in monthly rent.

While there may be other perceived disadvantages, these are the ones our blogging team has encountered.