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Owning a business comes with benefits and drawbacks, and you need to act quickly and adjust your strategy when things change. Business relocation may be one of the major changes in your entrepreneurial career, and it could be planned or unplanned, depending on the circumstances.
Regardless of what forced you to change the location of your business, there are a few things to keep in mind when planning a relocation strategy.
1. Study the Location Using Facts and Figures
Don’t just go anywhere unless you have no other option. Instead, you need to study the place where you’ll move your business in as much detail as possible to understand the strengths and weaknesses that your business might have in that market.
While official stats and chamber’s reports are, undoubtedly, a great source for the figures, the research on the immigration community, local laws, and success stories might serve as a good insight into the real-life of people who live there.
This research will also give you an understanding of how others handle their entrepreneurial activities in that area and what it feels like to live and work in that place.
2. Digitize What Can Be Digitized
During the years of operating your business, you might have collected a large chunk of archives consisting of many documents and files that are, most likely, in hard copy format. Make digital copies of the archive that you consider as important or the documents that should be kept for a few years (like tax returns or payments).
3. Use Devices and Apps to Back up Your Information
There is no such thing as overdoing it when it comes to saving your business’ information. Remember from your college essay writing experience — when you forgot to save a paper you were writing, and then something happened with your laptop? Your document and all of your efforts were erased, and you had to start all over. Well, when it comes to business relocation, starting over doesn’t only cost an immense amount of money but also can’t guarantee you’ll get back to where you started.
In college, you could solve the problem and get free essay samples from Eduzaurus to get a customized solution so you could continue your studying and still get all the As and Bs. In business, the failure to back up all information can cost you, well, the business itself. So your priority here is to choose the most reliable app to back up all the information you consider valuable enough to store.
4. Hire a Responsible Moving and Packing Company
You don’t want to unpack broken monitors or look for missing printers after you move your business. This is why you need to hire a trusted team of packers and movers to be sure everything is insured and will be delivered on time and unharmed.
If you plan to ship your supplies and equipment to a different country or continent, it might make more sense to buy new equipment there and sell your old before you move because the cost of moving may be close to the same amount. In this way, you can save time and buy new devices and furniture.
5. Insure All Valuable Papers
Some papers don’t have legal value when presented as a copy so keeping them safe at all times is critical. This may include registration documents, tax issuing papers, purchases, agreements, contracts, leasing, etc.
It makes sense to insure them if the insurance company you work with provides this option. And don’t forget to make good color copies (printed and digital) of each document.
6. Take Care of Human Resources
Chances are, relocation won’t fit many of your current employees’ plans, and you’ll need to hire a new team to keep your business going.
To make it as seamless as possible, you need to start looking for skilled team members before the relocation takes place, though you can consider some other options on how to have the team as soon as you move:
- Do the cost-effective analysis of spending per a particular employee. Consider the median salary of the employee on the equivalent position in the target place, cost of living there, and see if it will make sense to offer relocation to your current employee for a higher salary than recruiting a new one.
- Ask if anyone wants to move with you. Maybe there are people who are attached to the corporate culture in your company, love their work, or simply don’t mind moving? Offer them what you can and provide three scenarios of how the future might go for the company and for them: the optimistic, the real, and the pessimistic one. Don’t hide the issues that might cause a problem for them in the future. Be as transparent and open about the difficulties as possible.
Doing research, gathering necessary information, taking care of inventory and manpower, planning a budget, and backing up documents are the most important steps to take before relocating your business. Importantly, you should prepare for this as soon as you can because by failing to prepare, you prepare to fail.
