Submitted by ops on
Maintaining an office can be quite challenging, so creative and innovative solutions offer facility managers options that help them do their job. Here at Bay Area Installations, we are always looking for new ways to help you with your furniture needs.
One of the programs that we have developed is our Furniture Management Program. This program was a brainchild of our founder Tom Mohamed. Here's the story: we were servicing an account for a national furniture sales company. The account had several branches in the local area, each of which were being altered. We would go to one location, knock down and liquidate the furniture, then receive deliver install new furniture. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Suddenly the work stopped with only half of the branches serviced. The reason? Corporate had decided it was spending too much money on new furniture and had to wait until further funding was approved. This left local branches without the facilities that they needed and caused problems for local operations when they had to hire new staff.
That's where we stepped in and created the Furniture Management Program. We had recently removed a complete office set up from one of the facilities. A second facility, who's project had been postponed for lack of funding, desperately needed the furniture. So we offered to install the furniture we took out of the original office. It was practically new and exactly the right fit. The install was approved and the office was able to be up and running months ahead of time and for a fraction of the cost.
So we pitched the idea to corporate and they agreed. Instead of liquidating the old furniture, we would sort through it and determine which pieces were "still good" and provide a list to the sales company. Then, when corporate approved outfitting a new office, the sales company would let them first browse the furniture inventory list and see if they could use pieces from that list for the office (after all - they already owned those pieces). When the decision was made, we would pull the pieces from storage and make the delivery. We would then update the inventory and reduce the storage bill as appropriate.
People were skeptical at first about a continuing storage bill. But the first time that they didn't have to order two new filing cabinets (they had 'like new' cabinets in inventory) they realized how much they had saved. The cost of those two cabinets was probably more than a year's worth of storage payments - and they were immediately available!
We have continued this program into the present day. If you have furniture or other items that you need to store and access later - possibly saving you a good deal in replacement costs - give us a call and let us set up a walkthrough. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well at Bay Area Installations where we are always coming up with creative and innovative solutions to solve your problems.