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Moving Both Your Office and Warehouse Environments? One Size Does Not Fit All
If your business move includes both an office relocation and a warehouse relocation, the key to success will be treating each move as a distinct effort with unique human and technical components.
What’s included in an office moving plan?
Office relocation is complex in itself, relying on careful orchestration of equipment, furniture and fixtures including:
- Space planning
- Furniture planning
- Documentation
- Cleaning out vacated space
- Possibility of extra fixtures and equipment
- Promoting, communicating and scheduling the move
Office relocation is all about the people
As business moves, both office and warehouse relocation have unique challenges. In an office moving plan, working to help employees understand the purpose of the move and feel motivated to help out will be worth the time. Even more important is communicating the timing and details of the move, and what is expected of all involved. It’s a team effort.
The practical and technical elements of an office move still largely involve people. Getting your people up and running with minimal downtime in a new space is the goal, and documenting workstation and equipment setup for efficient reconfiguration, installation and assembly is a big part of the solution.
Warehouse relocation brings a different level of complexity
Warehouse relocation introduces an entirely new set of variables, including:
- Finished goods inventory
- Raw goods inventory
- Inventory scanning and rescanning
- Racking assembly and disassembly
- Light industrial to heavy industrial handling equipment
- Battery chargers
- Warehouse mapping
- Equipment disassembly and reinstallation
- Maintaining integrity of warehouse management systems
Warehouse relocation: all about product
The biggest challenge most companies face during warehouse relocation in a business move is maintaining access to their products. A doubling of efforts is required, as for time, tracking and moving product between two spaces means moving twice as much product as usual. Companies may find themselves needing twice as many system resources, like scanning guns for example.
One of the biggest challenges industrial moves present is figuring out whether to keep both the old and new warehouses active during the transition, a question each business must answer for itself.
…and about people too
There is a large human element to warehouse relocation, but in this case, much of it is about vendor management and integration.
The efforts of riggers, electricians and OEM servicing companies who can help disconnect and reconnect machinery need careful orchestration and management.
Bringing it all together: coordinating a business and warehouse move
If your business move involves both warehouse relocation and an office moving plan, one of your biggest challenges will be deciding which to tackle first. This is a question only you can answer based on your unique business. If you’re considering a relocation company it is critical that you hire a knowledgeable vendor, one that has experience in both office and industrial settings. If you decide to move both environments at once, you’ll want to make sure you have a very distinct plan—and distinct personnel—to handle each.
If you’re looking for quotes from a full service relocation company for your office and/or warehouse move, feel free to contact us.