OfficeRnD: Making Flexible Working The Way of Working

At OfficeRnD, making flexible working the way of working has always been our main goal!

Although there are still people who think of open spaces and beer Fridays, for us, “flexible working” is something much bigger than that.

It’s the movement that is reshaping the future of work. It’s creating a world where the office is something more than a physical place.

A platform that helps you have an easily accessible workspace, where you can focus on your work, gives you access to knowledge you didn’t have before and connects you to like-minded professionals.

Even more, it’s a workspace offered as a service delivered with a sense of warmth and hospitality.

Flexible working and choice

We believe in a world where flexibility and choice of where we work is the norm. We see a business world that is supported by communities of professionals that will reach a new level of productivity and creativity.

On the other hand, we see people that are not tied to an office in a single city, country or continent. People that are able to go and work from every corner of the world and still feel like they belong, still be part of the communities they can learn from and contribute to.

What fuels our belief in the flexible workspace industry?

Coming from the software industry, one of the most dynamic markets, we saw first hand what was the impact of the transition from traditional software to software as a service.

SaaS (Software as a Service) took the entire world like a storm for the greater good. Products offered as a service make stronger partnerships where both parties are aligned and benefit from each other’s success. Workspace as a Service (or Flexible Workspace, or Coworking for short) is no exception to this rule. Successful members lead to successful spaces which makes successful members

We started our company in a coworking space and we’ve moved from one space to another as we grew. We’re now a team of 50+ strong, we’re spread around the world and we continue to work from flexible workspaces.

Why? Well, because for us it makes more sense to focus 100% of our energy on our customers, and have someone else think about how the office that we walk into every morning can not only serve our immediate needs but add value on top.

And I can guarantee that there will always be something added on top – we’re seeing this for a fact in our daily work with hundreds of flexible workspace operators. The best ones share a common thread that stands out – an inexhaustive passion and energy for helping their members and their businesses grow and succeed.

And it’s not only because their business depends on it, but it’s also just the type of people they are and that’s why they are so successful. And when you compare them to your Landlord or Building Manager, you’ll see a clear difference.

And people like them will make sure that the future of work will be different. People whose goals are not to make sure that a building runs smoothly, but that the businesses in the community they’ve created run smoothly.

And that… that requires a new level of flexibility and collaboration. A new level of efficiency, that makes sure all companies in a given community are at peak productivity to stay competitive. That they have everything they need to be creative and innovative, to be at the top of their game.

How at OfficeRnD helps to make flexible working the norm?

We are building a flexible workspace management platform. Up until now, we were focused on lifting the administrative burden of operators so they can focus on their members being successful.

In the future, we see our solution becoming much more than that – the foundation, the nervous system of a workspace that allows operators to have their fingers on the pulse of their workspaces at all time, empowering them to make smarter decisions and have a greater impact on the business of their members.

As a company, just in the span of the next few years, we’ll be looking at considerably growing our team. We are now 50+, and I can easily see us tripling our size in the next 2 years. But we’re not doing it just for the sake of growing.

The product we are building requires complex technical expertise, and honestly, it’s a LOT of work. Even though 25+ out of 50 at the moment are working on the software product, that’s not nearly enough.

We need more improvements, new functionality, more reporting capabilities, more integrations. We also need to make sure that we invest enough capacity in keeping the open channel of conversation with you, so we continue to build the right product, not just any product.

The complexity of the product itself also requires exemplary customer service. However focused we are on user experience, complexity will always be on par. And what we’ve learned along the way is that it’s not important how “good” a product is functionally, but how successful it is. And success is measured by the people who use it and the value they get from it.

And finally, as a vendor, we feel personally responsible for making sure that the future of work comes sooner rather than later. We have access to so much raw knowledge through daily conversations with any kind of flexible workspaces around the world. It is our responsibility to amplify this knowledge and inject it back into the ecosystem, so we can all grow faster and smarter, together. We are a community after all.

We’re more determined than ever to make all this happen. Not only do we put enormous efforts into our product and service on a daily basis but we’re constantly trying to find ways to speed up that growth. Our recent $3M funding is already helping us do that.

We have a vision, and now we go on a mission

So how do we decide if we had a good day, a good quarter or a good year? We just simply look back and ask ourselves – did we help the world’s best flexible workspaces, the champions of the future of work, deliver better experiences to their customers, more power to their brand, and sustainable growth to their business?

Special Thanks to Michaela and Chil from our marketing team and our advisor Ben Munn for putting this post together. 

Get to know us better! Here are a few interviews with our team:

• APAC Coworking Market Scales with a Great Swing: Interview with Jessica Knapp, Regional Manager at OfficeRnD
• OfficeRnD Expands in the US to Better Serve Local Coworking Spaces: Michael Everts Joins the Company as Regional Manager
• Meet Inga Taylor: Member of OfficeRnD’s Advisory Board with 20 Years of Serviced Office Experience
• Meet OfficeRnD’s Advisory Board: Ben Munn, Managing Director of Flex Space at JLL