The Office Move

So, you are moving offices. That’s exciting! Not like going on a roller coaster or holiday exciting, but a new view from the window and different shops to get lunch from the kind of exciting!

Amongst the tough decisions of location, staff commutes, office space and layout, transport connections, furniture and booking the removal team, there is also the consideration of your IT infrastructure.

Here are my top tips to help the move run as smooth as possible, at least from an IT perspective:

1. What equipment is at the new location already?

Is it a business park, or a shared office? The chances are that there may already be connectivity and cabling, but that is a key thing to check first!

2. Have you got all your cabling and physical infrastructure booked and mapped out?

It’s a good idea to plan early for your infrastructure and spot any concerns as soon as possible. Map out your physical infrastructure and consider the following:

Are there floor ports for network connections?

Are there enough power sockets for the desks?

Is there the right security and space available for any on-site equipment such as switches, routers and servers.

3.  Communication is key!

Phone lines, internet lines, migration dates, IP addresses for services – are they going to change? And don’t forget any updates to your address for email signatures and website!

4. Plan your work and work your plan

Get a planner for the dates (Microsoft Teams has an excellent feature for this!). Book in times and dates with the necessary engineers – do you need a site survey first? Who and when is free to do this? Are the right people from the support or third party and your team included and available?

5. By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail

Prepare as much ahead as possible – get your internet installed and the WIFI done as soon as you can, ideally before you move in. That way, you can check it all works, and find any weak spots for WIFI. This will save so much hassle later down the line.

6. Where is my desk?

Seating plans are incredibly helpful for all parties involved – not just for staff to see who gets the window seat. Engineers find these incredibly useful to determine what resources need to be put in place so that you can have the ideal set up with no compromises.

7. Don’t forget your old site

Buying new IT kit for the new place? Great! But don’t forget that you may need to confidentially and securely dispose of all old kit (GDPR). (Fabric can help you with this too!)

 

Hopefully everything will run perfectly, but of course, this is in an ideal world. Things do not always transpire this way. In the event of things going awry, the key thing to remember is communication. Here’s some further advice to consider now, even if you aren’t necessarily planning to move any time soon:

Phone Number forwards

You may have already looked at setting up your main phone number(s) to call a mobile number of a member of the team. If not, this is something Fabric can assist with. This is not just useful for the office move but is also useful in the event of an emergency.

Home and Remote workers

Do you have anything in place that allows staff to work remotely or from home? This could be a VPN (virtual private network) to the office, or simply accessing email and other applications without needing to be onsite. Office 365 has multiple applications to help with this. Again, this helps to set up and check now – when the day for the move comes, even with the best planning, it is a huge disruption. Setting staff up to be able to work in other locations will alleviate this and is not as costly as you may think.

If you are moving office soon or just considering the idea, we wish you the best of luck!

Please contact us on 01625 443110 or here, to discuss any plans and to see how we can help you!