Sarah Walters, sales manager for Intelligent Office of Ottawa, sits in front of one of the virtual offices that she manages in downtown Ottawa.
A growing popularity in non-traditional office structures is allowing businesses to operate without requiring that employees show up for a day of work.
This emerging trend towards virtual offices depends on outsourcing basic office amenities to a central company.
Intelligent Office Ottawa is the city’s only virtual office centre and is the second Canadian location of Intelligent Office, one of North America’s largest virtual officing companies.
The Ottawa branch, located in the World Exchange Plaza, provides telephone reception, mailing services, boardroom and office room rentals to businesses in the service, finance, design and technology industries. Founded in 2008, Intelligent Office Ottawa already has 115 businesses as clients.
Additional branches have opened in Washington, Cincinnati, Denver, Las Vegas and Toronto.
Part of the appeal of Intelligent Office is having the name of a well-known building attached to the company without the heavy price, says Sarah Walters, sales manager of Intelligent Office Ottawa.
“It’s more than 50 per cent cheaper than what it would cost for a normal office in the World Exchange Plaza with the reception, hydro, heating, phone bills, mailing and courier fees,” she says.
Pricing depends on the exact services the business requires but Walters says $200 to $300 a month can cover basic telephone reception, office amenities and temporary office space. She even points out that some businesses with Intelligent Office Ottawa pay less than $100 a month to maintain their virtual office.
What makes virtual officing unique from traditional offices is the flexibility in work schedules, says Walters.
“I find that a lot of people don’t want to work full business hours. Everyone’s trying to find the new economical way to save money and this allows people to be their own boss and work within their own hours.”
Silicon Valley Computers, a computer sales and repair shop, has been operating from Intelligent Office Ottawa for slightly more than one year.
Jim Cooper, the company’s sales manager, says one of the main benefits of a virtual office is being able to save on hiring a full-time receptionist, which isn’t always the most cost-effective solution. For nine years, the now 10-year-old business operated from a traditional office, which Cooper describes the experience as a fluctuating rollercoaster.
“It seemed like either we weren’t busy and had employees standing around with nothing to do, or we had too much going on and the phone was always ringing off the hook,” he says.
This is a problem for service contractors, such as Silicon Valley Computers, because it is especially important that clients be able to reach the business as quickly as possible at any time, he says.
“But now with Intelligent Office, our employees don’t need to be sitting around the office the entire day.”
“It’s a great concept,” says David Martinek, vice-president of marketing and communications at Recycle Frog, a gold recycling company that has been with Intelligent Office Ottawa for eight months. “They offer a full-service package and you literally look like a huge prestigious company without having to spend the money to create that impression for customers.”
Martinek says it was the high rent of traditional offices that pushed Recycle Frog into becoming a virtual office, a move he says has paid off.
“Our overhead fees are lower so it allows us to be much more competitive in our field. Unless we can maintain this advantage in a fixed location of our own, there’s no reason to move out,” he says.
Martinek says Recycle Frog has no plans to move from the virtual office operation.
“Right now, we’re looking at a ‘pay as you need’ model. Maybe in a couple of years, we’ll be large enough to own a bigger space, who knows,” he says.