7 Critical Tips for a Smooth Business Relocation
When business growth or an evolving customer or client base makes relocating necessary, make a checklist of these seven critical tips for a smooth business relocation. To ease the stress of moving and ensure a successful launch at your new site, prepare staff, security, and business neighbors for your moving day.
Site Selection
Before you pack a single box or get quotes from movers, you have to know where you’re going and why. Site selection is critical for business success. Your reasons for relocating will dictate site selection: are you moving to be closer to suppliers, expand your space, or have better access to talent? Perhaps your customer demographics have shifted, and you need to move to remain convenient to your core constituency.
Whatever the reason for your move, make sure you’ve thoroughly vetted any prospective new locations, reviewed lease terms, and considered convenience for customers and employees, including parking and access to public transportation.
Project Management
Planning and executing a relocation can be a full-time job, even for smaller businesses. Select a project manager who knows your business inside and out, is highly detail-oriented, and has a history of successfully managing major projects for your business.
Larger businesses will also need to appoint department-level team leads for the move. Together with the moving project manager, these team leads can form a task force that helps all departments prepare for the move, anticipate potential problems, and ensure that no details fall through the cracks.
Inform Employees
Relocating a business is disruptive for employees, especially if you are relocating to a new city. Employees deserve to know the justification for the move, why you chose the specific location, whether your new location will have the same or better amenities as your current site, and what their responsibilities will be to help prepare for moving day.
If possible, organize a tour of the new space to ease employee anxiety and build enthusiasm for your new location. Show off lounges, parking, cafeterias, and mock-ups of how each floor or area will be organized. If you plan to buy new furniture, have samples on-site so employees can check out what their new workstations may look like.
Don’t neglect the practical aspects. Rather, provide the precise address for your new location and the date of the upcoming move. It’s also helpful to distribute checklists of employee responsibilities for packing their desk items, how to label their box, and where to leave it for the movers.
Special Preparation for IT
Of all your operations and departments, the IT team will have the most complex task for a move. They’ll be tasked with backing up and securing data, ensuring operations can continue in the cloud through the move, that downtime is minimal, and that delicate tech equipment is packed properly for the move.
Relocation is also an opportunity to upgrade your IT systems and equipment. There’s no point in hauling outdated computers, phone sets, or conference room monitors when you’ll just replace them in a few months anyway.
IT should be the first department to start planning for the move. They’ll need detailed schematics of the new location to identify power outlets, ethernet ports, cabling and fiber-optic lines, telecommunication rooms, and ventilation and heat controls.
Encourage your IT managers to meet together and make plans as early in the relocation process as possible—as much as a year, but a minimum of 6 months out—so they can inventory and label all tech equipment, make lists of upgrades that make sense, and anticipate glitches that could happen as a result of bringing your systems down, relocating hardware, and bringing everything back online.
Lighten the Load
Plan and prepare for a deep cleaning of your office before you vacate. Don’t pay movers to transport worn, broken, or outdated furniture. You may be able to sell or donate some of your old furnishings. Be sure to consult with your accountants on the tax treatment of sale proceeds or the value of donations and whether they can be claimed as write-offs.
If you’ve been in your current location for a long time, it’s a sure thing you’ll find an accumulation of unsalvageable desk chairs, scratched credenzas, wobbly staff kitchen tables, as well as old file cabinets, dead electronics, outdated cabling, and defunct monitors stashed away in storerooms and closets. Now is the time to get rid of all that junk.
Contact a roll-off dumpster service to arrange for a dumpster rental. Get specifics about how to dispose of electronics, as you may be required to recycle them separately. If your dumpster service can’t handle those items, they should be able to tell you who can.
Arrange for shredding of old physical files you are no longer required to keep. Moves go more smoothly when you take with you only what you will need at your new location and purge the rest.
Take Inventory and Label Everything
Before anything gets packed and moved, take inventory of all your furniture, equipment, and supplies. Label everything and create a color-coding system to identify things that will be disposed of, things to be donated or sold, and things that will move to the new location.
A detailed inventory will ensure that everything is accounted for once you’re in your new location. Appoint a supply and equipment manager to match up labels with items to ensure nothing that was supposed to move got left behind or disappeared.
Communicate With Customers
Announce your move and when your new location will be up and running to your customer and clients early in the process. Use several means of communication, from traditional mailings (perhaps offering a special deal to come in and see you at your new place once it is open) to announcements on social media to email. Avoid surprise at all costs; the last thing you want is for clients or customers to show up at your old location for a meeting, product demonstration, or pick-up and find it empty and abandoned. Send reminders two weeks before your move, reiterating that you’re looking forward to seeing your customers and clients at your new location on a specific date.
If your new location will be substantially bigger, offer more or new products, or add services, a grand opening may be in order. Appoint or hire an event planner with marketing experience to set up a celebration a few days after your new location is open and you’ve tested all your systems to make sure everything is working as it should. Offer samples, specials, tours, or incentives to bring your customers in and get them excited about your new site.
These critical tips for a smooth business relocation should ease the stress of moving your business to a new site. With proper planning, you’ll be able to generate excitement and get buy-in from your employees, clients, and customers. Good luck at your new location!
