How Us&Co Flexible Workspaces Scaled Their Business Successfully

 

 

 

 

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    No of sites 3
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    United Kingdom London
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    Ireland Dublin

About Us&Co

Us&Co is an international flexible workspace company that owns and operates centers in London and Dublin. Their spaces offer a modern, professional working environment that includes private offices, fixed desks, hot desks, meeting rooms, and a stunning members club space.

The company has vast experience in the flex space market and has managed to strike a great balance between a modern and community-focused flexible workspace and a classy and well-thought-through serviced office.

Both start-ups and established businesses feel right at home there, making it a great mix of like-minded people.

Overview

Us&Co’s expansion across multiple markets comes with the challenge of juggling between running the existing centers, setting up the new sites, selling them, and making sure they’ll hit the go-live deadline.

The OfficeRnD software for flex spaces plays a key role in helping them scale operations by:

  • Automating key parts of their current operations in existing centers to allow time for expansion.
  • Supporting the sales process and creating the basic structure of new centers with the quick setup of company profiles, billing plans, contract templates, and floorplans.
  • Shortening the time required to set up and test systems in new centers through native integrations with key business systems such as Accounting, Payments, Access Control, and WiFi.
  • I like you guys! I think you are very proactive and want to learn and develop with your clients. You listen, you take on board what we say and you’re very open-minded. And the fact that you can so easily integrate with other systems is a huge plus for us and it helps us run the business smoothly. It’s what makes our job easier and helps us stay ‘ahead of the game’.

    silvi us&co
    Sylvi Wilamowska
    Operations Manager, Business Space | Us&Co

The challenge: Running current centers smoothly while opening the new ones

Us&Co is an excellent example of a successful flex space business.

But even with a team with dozens of years of experience in running flexible workspaces, there are still challenges that come with ambitious growth:

  • Operational overload

    It’s hard to make sure that operations in the current centers will continue to run smoothly when you’re focusing on opening new buildings (especially if they are in different markets).

  • Visibility on occupancy

    Selling offices in a new space has to happen months before the actual building is open, so you need easy access to key info such as the number of offices that have to be filled in, their capacity, and the general layout of each floor.

  • Setting up systems

    Between finishing the build-out of a new center, setting up its basic infrastructure, and signing license agreements with new clients, there is little time to properly set up and test all systems. At the same time, it’s crucial to make sure that everything just works once the doors open.

The solution: Integrating systems and automating processes

Automating key parts of current operations to allow time for expansion

The Us&Co team was already using OfficeRnD in their first location. This ensured they could safely rely on it to support 3 key elements in the daily operations of the space while the team focuses on the opening of the new sites:

  • Billing: correctly charging their clients (the OfficeRnD <> Stripe <> GoCardless integration) and the proper recording of those charges into their accounting software (the OfficeRnD <> Xero integration). This functionality is used by Us&Co’s accounts team to do all the management reports.
  • Security and Access Control: making sure that each member will automatically receive access based on their membership level (the OfficeRnD <> Salto integration). Enabling them to just get into the building, have access to the right floor, book a meeting room and have access to it.
  • Meeting room calendar: taking away a lot of responsibility from the Us&Co team and putting the member in the driver’s seat. Also allowing external people to take a look at all meeting rooms and book since the calendar is tied to the actual availability of the rooms.
Setting up the new centers in OfficeRnD to assist in pre-sales

With OfficeRnD already in use, adding a new center, setting up its billing plans, contract templates, and drawing its floorplans was an easy job. With that basic structure in place, it took the Us&Co team just a few clicks to generate a contract for any prospect. In addition, they could easily edit this data, merge offices at will and convert them to meeting rooms if necessary, so the sales team has the flexibility to create custom offers.

Testing all business-critical systems before the go-live

OfficeRnD’s native integrations with Us&Co’s access control system (SALTO Pro Access), accounting software (Xero), payments (Stripe and GoCardless) and WiFi (Medusa) ensure that all business-critical systems are in sync and there is no room for error. With the opening of a new center member contracts will be properly set up, their invoices will be correct and issued promptly, and they’ll have access to the space and the WiFi based on the level of their membership/plan.

 

Want more customer stories? We help the best coworking and flexible workspaces manage and scale their business. Find more here.

  • OfficeRnD is the brains behind our operations, especially because of its many integrations. It just helps us make sure that everything works when we open the doors of a new location.

    silvi us&co
    Sylvi Wilamowska
    Operations Manager, Business Space | Us&Co

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    No of sites 3
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    United Kingdom London
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    Ireland Dublin
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