How Us&Co Coworking Space Scaled Their Business Successfully

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.

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.

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.