Wednesday, July 18, 2012

What you lose when you buy office furniture online

In the Age of Information, it seems like everything moves much more quickly than it used to. In days gone by, when you were out to a meeting, at lunch or on vacation, you were disconnected from the office and things were just handled or waited while you were away. Now, everyone is strapped to their smartphone, and business moves at the speed of light. In some regard, this is good, in that the days of waiting for a response from someone for weeks are over and we all expect a response almost immediately. We can get tasks accomplished more quickly and efficiently. When we need to find out information, we simply Google it and find the answers we need. This is great, right?

Unfortunately, along with the speed of technology, we are losing the personal contact it takes to make a complicated project move along smoothly - on time, on budget, no miscommunications. This is where the role of the office furniture dealership comes into play. While email and web searches are an hourly occurrence in my world, there are times when you need to consult with an expert in the topic you're interested in, to have a simple conversation where both parties can talk about options and possibilities in a back-and-forth manner. While Google and Bing can direct you to random answers to your question, a live person can share ideas the way a search engine never can. 

In addition, most office furniture dealerships will provide some level of design services on the front end in order to earn your business. Unless you are extremely well-versed in taking measurements and drawing a floorplan, creating a drawing yourself on graph paper can be a very time-consuming task. Wouldn't it be much easier to let the experts do this work for you? This will also create a living electronic file that can be modified at will, making revisions much more quickly.

After the floorplan is created, the layout needs to be conceptualized. While you may think you know exactly what you want to do, there are so many trends and value-engineering "tricks of the trade" that you may not be aware of or have seen in your internet searches. Again, the dealership works with the products and software on a daily basis, and can provide recommendations that you may never have thought of. And while it may seem like inviting a salesperson into your business means a sales pitch or products that are outside of your budget, we not only have access to hundreds of options, but also truly want to help you to create a space that reflects your company's personality, fits your financial goals, helps attract and retain great personnel and helps your employees work more efficiently, all while making the best use of your real estate. 

Finding ideas online can be a great start to help get an idea of what you'd like the end result to be, but a flawless execution with products that are commercial grade, warrantied and carefully chosen to meet your objectives takes an expert. After all, you wouldn't hire me to do your job, would you?

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