The need for top of the line technology grows along with the evolution and growth of Coworking. We recently looked at what features you should make sure you have in your management platform. Now, let’s take a look at the signs its time to upgrade the technology in your space. Is your technology outdated and no longer fulfilling your needs?
Slow Internet Speeds
This is pretty self explanatory. You cannot expect to operate at peak performance, maintain member satisfaction, and present a positive environment for guests, with faulty internet speeds. While certain physical aspects of your space (infrastructure, glass, etc) could cause connectivity issues, there is nothing more aggravating than trying to work through slow internet. For this reason, it’s important to optimize signal and placement of your access points during the fit out process.
Another cause of the slow down could be that you have more members than ever before using up the bandwidth. We’ll touch on that in a bit. This is a good problem to have! Your space is becoming more popular, which means you need to adjust. Do a check to make sure your access points are running at optimal levels frequently.
More Members
So what happens when you’ve got more members than you’ve ever had before? Or you’ve got heavier bandwidth users than you’re used to? This is one of the main signs that it’s time to upgrade your software. Your Coworking platform needs to be able to adjust with you.
Just think about the challenges of having more billing, more reporting to analyze, greater security requirements, more everything. Selecting the proper workspace platform designed to streamline all these needs is of the utmost importance when your technology is getting outdated.
Processing Time
This really goes hand in hand with having more members. The more your space grows, the more of a challenge it will be to keep up with tasks manually. Manual processing not only is massively time consuming, it can also bring about human error and lead to leakage. Operators now have more options than ever to combat the pitfalls of manual processes.
Onboarding processes take considerable time. You’ll have to do more of those than you ever have before. Software that integrates with many other platforms are great, yes. However, you may eventually wind up with a huge web of non-connected processes. In the ideal situation, your processing time would be most mitigated by an all-in-one solution in which all operating functions are contained in-house automatically.
Underutilized Space
While you can visibly notice underutilized space in some cases, such as empty meeting rooms or vacant desks, its really difficult to quantify exactly how much of your space is being used to its full potential. The need to better measure underused space is another telling sign of your technology being outdated.
When we reviewed KPI’s to monitor performance, we talked about approaches to measure occupancy. If you can’t track Daily Peak Utilization, Average Peak Utilization, Frequency of Peaks, Conference Room Booking Rate, and many other stats, you will be falling behind the tech advancements of other spaces. These reports will provide incredibly detailed information that you can then use for marketing purposes, for redesign, for many other revenue driving methods.
Finally, one last way to know its time to update your Coworking management technology is when you notice all the other tech has surpassed it.
In other words, members are updating their phones and tablets and computers. Digital everything is upon us. Artificial intelligence is growing by leaps and bounds. Your lighting and keyless access and energy consumption is improving with tech advances. The building you’re located in is beefing up their tech as well. So why would you continue to run manual processes or work with an outdated management platform. Streamline your operations, simplify all aspects of managing one or multiple spaces, and provide the best possible experience for members, guests, and staff.
To learn more about why the all-new Yardi Kube is the platform of choice for the most technology-driven spaces, please click the link below.