A great commercial move should give you a new perspective on your existing business. What’s alive? What’s working like it’s supposed to? And what’s dead that you probably could do without?

Start With A “Keep, Donate, Recycle” Audit – 60 Days Out

Before you pack a single thing, take a stroll and make a list of all your items. Count all monitors, desktop computers, and peripherals that are stored in a messy cabinet and haven’t been used since the last time you moved. The point here is to conduct a proper inventory audit and separate your assets into three categories: what you’ll be taking with you, what you’ll be donating, and what will be disposed of properly.

Just this step can render your moving expenses cheaper. Why would you pay to move a printer that malfunctions every time it prints a page or a server that’s been out of service for two years? Moreover, you’re not exposed to risk in your new premises. Hardware that’s been replaced but not officially taken offline represents a potential threat to your data just waiting among your other obsolete devices.

Make sure you do this early enough. Having to rush the process won’t leave you time to find a company that collects electronic waste or to wipe clean those devices that are coming with you. Sixty days should be your minimum. Ideally, you should go over the 90-day mark.

Decommissioning Is Where Most Companies Get It Wrong

When a company relocates to a new commercial space, most of the focus goes to the physical move. The rush to the finish line means the old office decommission gets condensed into the last week.

But that’s actually the riskiest stage. The decommissioned servers, the old laptops, the photocopiers – these endpoints hold residual data even after you’ve “deleted” everything. A breached, recycled hard drive can be just as damaging as a breached active one. Proper certified data destruction – physical shredding of the drive or verified wiping, ideally coupled with a documented chain of custody – solves this risk. And there is no other way to do so when dealing with endpoints you’re no longer in physical control of.

Beyond the servers and obvious endpoints, there’s a category of “hidden” e-waste most offices forget: old cabling, the battery backups (uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, units), and various other computer/IT-room peripherals. Most of this gear also can’t go into the general waste because it contains the hazardous substances lead, cadmium, and mercury. That means it needs to be managed through a proper disposal pathway.

Working with a professional e-waste recycling melbourne firm guarantees that that pathway is through certified channels rather than to a landfill. The globe generates more than 50 million metric tonnes of e-waste a year, but only about 20% of it is formally recycled. A commercial move is one of the best direct places a company can reduce that number.

Build The New Space Before You Arrive

While the fit-out itself gets hashed out in the design meetings of phase 1, the IT requirements are often only really considered just before move-in, at phase 2. In an ideal project, both get at least a passing consideration in phase 1, which gives you time to spot and solve any issues that might prove to be showstoppers if left too late.

Operational downtime on day one is avoidable, but only if the planning happens well in advance. A team that can’t connect to shared drives or access email on the first morning in the new office is a preventable problem. The server room layout might seem far removed from picking colors for the storefront – but it has a nasty tendency to surprise.

Update Every Digital Footprint At Once

Changing your business address is more than a simple letter to the post office. It impacts your local search visibility, your banking relationships, contracts and agreements, and the first impression new prospects have of you when they research your business online.

That’s a lot to remember, especially when your brain is already fully occupied managing the actual move. It’s not surprising some things get left off the list and you’re stuck frantically updating things as you remember them later on.

For most businesses, you can update your Google Business Profile, email signatures, website contact pages, your invoicing details, and any directory listings all on the same day. Aim for that day to be the first day the new location is open to the public, whenever possible. Updating things piecemeal means that slight inconsistency comes up in search results and undermines client trust (and can lumber you with an inaccurate public listing for years).

Vendors will update your billing address when they get returned mail, but your marketing and the recorded details on myriad accounts all over the internet are your responsibility. A week after you move, generate a list of the mails that were returned for “unknown address” and move through that vendor-by-vendor. Most businesses will get new stationery printed, so by the time the last of the old slips through the system, you should only be leaving footprints in a single location.

Vendors and clients who have checks returned for an unknown address should be contacted with your updated details even before the moving truck arrives. Two weeks before your move, you should send out those postal notices. Include in that mail all current projects or unpaid invoices that need to be brought up to date. If you have money owing, they will find you – but there’s little hope they’ll be so accommodating if correcting the address is your responsibility and it involves the issuance of a check.

The Move Is The Opportunity

Relocating a commercial space makes leaders face issues that are usually ignored, as decisions are postponed or cancelled due to lack of time or priority. But when it’s time to move, that unused equipment must be dealt with. The old data in dusty corners must be cleared or packed up. And the organization’s entire physical and digital “stuff” footprint must be reviewed.

Most companies handle the clutter. Ones that use the move to address the real issues of old assets, old data, unsecured media, and the obsolete hardware they leave behind, as well as the new intentions they should bring to the layout of their new space, come out smelling far better than they would’ve otherwise.

That’s not a side benefit of moving. That’s the main point.