There’s a good post up right now at the CORT Office Furniture Rental blog about how to make an office move go smoothly. A business only moves when relocation is preferable to the alternative. Some reasons you might move include the following:

• Long term cost savings with a better commercial lease agreement
• Access to a more advantageous location (which is what real estate is all about)
• A desire to consolidate locations because of restructuring or downsizing
• A need to expand – or to ensure space is available for future expansion

Moving to a new office is always inconvenient and disruptive at an organizational and individual level. CORT’s blog post covers ways to make the process a little less painful.  An efficient office move allows you to get back up to speed with the least amount of lost productivity. A few of the many smart tips offered include:

• Creating an inventory of current office furniture and equipment that’s organized by functional grouping
• Determining whether rental furniture makes sense to fill gaps in your inventory for the short term
• Formulating an office move plan that can take place in stages (and communicating this plan to employees)

We’d like to add a couple of additional tips. First, an office move is the ideal time to take advantage of free space planning services (like our no-charge consultation). This is an affordable and highly effective way to determine how well your existing inventory will fit in your new space. You may uncover ways that different office furniture can help you save money by making more efficient use of your square footage. Or, you might discover a better way to arrange your existing furniture – including where to place workstations for the most efficient cabling and wiring layout.

Second, it may pay to have your cubicles broken down, moved, and set back up by professional office furniture installers. That’s especially important if you have a high-end set of cubicles that you want to keep in good condition. Some systems are more complicated to work with than others. The last thing you want is to move into a new office, re-install your cubes, and end up with a box of “spare” parts that you can’t figure out what to do with. You’ll find out when someone leans on the wrong cubicle wall and the whole setup comes crashing down!