I sat down and had a cup of coffee with Jessica Knapp, a guru in the coworking arena. I wanted to get an insider’s perspective and understand latest developments around coworking businesses across the ANZ region.
Jessica has worked all over the globe, including the US, the UK and back at home in New Zealand. She used to run her own coworking space and over the last year has consulted and set up numerous coworking projects. In all these locations, the local community was a key driver for success. This is where members reside but also events provide networking opportunities allowing them to learn and grow from each other but to also extend the local area businesses to promote economies of scale.
A coworking space has to cater for its members' differing requirements. Both the physical environment and digital integration of solutions within the business has the objective of improving the experience for members. The creation of different spaces through lighting, temperature and aesthetics is to drive different outcomes, whether it be creativity, team work, productivity, however the tech experience needs to be seamless between all of them. This ease of use and intuitive nature is all to increase member adoption throughout the local community. For this reason location plays a major part of a member's choice.
Flexibility is referring to design and layout, integration opportunities within the different software products and scalability of the business. Memberships tend to be monthly or weekly but even daily passes are available, to cater for member lifestyles. Additionally reliability and price elasticity ensures repeat members as roles traditionally are more free-lance, start ups, software engineers or those with remote locations which are price sensitive. This does change depending on the location and member facilities.
A significant growth of the hybrid model has been seen in the post-COVID era, providing businesses with a second location option for their employees whilst accessing their current location. Businesses now have more responsibility on ensuring a safe home working environment and these spaces provide peace of mind to employers whilst having the required amenities and being easy and flexible.
For employees, having another workspace option empowers them to work the way they want, in a comfortable, safe and convenient space, with all the necessary tech – It's a win win!
As demand for coworking spaces continues, so are the number of integration requests to connect the coworking space management system to a print management solution. Integrating with PaperCut MF or Hive creates a productive, accurate and efficient workflow solution for administrators in the space to perform their work. Click here for more details.
