NeedOfficeSpace interviews David Alberto, CEO at Avanta Offices
September 23rd, 2009 | by Amy Edwards
Today we publish an exclusive interview with Avanta CEO David Alberto.
Avanta has serviced offices in major cities including London,
Manchester,
Edinburgh as well as a number of centres in India. It has also recently partnered with Regent Business Centers which has serviced offices throughout the United States.
The company was formed back in early 2004 to offer quality serviced offices in prime locations with excellent facilities, including meeting rooms, and virtual offices (provided by partner, Davinci Virtual UK). Avanta began by opening centres in prime London locations, but has expanded rapidly. The company prides itself on the service it offers its clients, which is why it succeeded in becoming “the first serviced office company in the UK to join the ICS (Institute of Customer Service)”
Q. How and why did Avanta come into existence?
Avanta originally started in 1998 after I had left Regus a year and a bit earlier and then merged with MWB Business Exchange. I subsequently left there in 2002 and started Avanta again in 2004.
The principles of Avanta were to provide high quality and well serviced space in the 3 and 4 star market. Even today, with the large number of operators, few provide good customer service and so there are still the issues of expensive poor quality services, such as telephony and IT. However, Avanta has managed to provide a corporate standard product and charge both transparently and at better value than our competition.
Q. You focus heavily on providing outstanding customer service for clients (first operator to join the ICS); do you feel this differentiates you from some other providers?
Our industry is particularly poor for having any recognised standards unlike the hotel or airline industries. Therefore, we had to create our own standards and then try to benchmark our service against the market to measure and improve Avanta upon.
Therefore, we saw the ICS as an appropriate body to do this with. Internally we have also created the LEAP ( learning and advancement programme ) in order to have a structured product and customer training programme that sets the required standards and knowledge for Avanta’s people.
Q. What new products do you envisage launching after your client focus group?
We continually look at new products and services, as well as how best to package these products both old and new. The new services that we are launching, specifically in relation to the client focus groups, are Thinkgrid which is a hosted serviced applications provider; a new hotdesking product where clients can rent a fully managed desk by the hour/ day; a new click to dial service where you can drag any number to an Avanta application and your desk phone will ring the number.
Finally, we’ll also be launching a new virtual secretary service for online administration support, as well as a revamped concierge service for travel arrangements and business support services to do with travel.
Q: You recently teamed up with the tax-payers alliance and have launched an SME portal (avantaexchange.com). Does this represent a shift in strategy to appeal to smaller businesses as well as corporate?
Avanta has always had a strong SME client base and some 65% of our occupiers are SMEs accounting for almost 60% of our revenues. The partnership of the Tax payers alliance wasn’t so much because of the SME market, but more one of corporate support to them so as to get the message out there that central govt and increased taxation is not the best way to support UK Plc.
We need less central control and red tape and lower taxes and more freedom in order to grow a successful economy. With respect to Avanta Exchange we felt it was important in order to create a valid community for our industry for people and organisations to communicate and share feedback, ideas, better practices and so on.
Q. A recent report showed that the average tenancy for a serviced office client is increasing. Do you feel that serviced office space is becoming a more long-term solution for UK businesses?
It is certainly clear to us that corporates now consider serviced offices as the norm for project space and terms of three years or less. The SME sector though has always considered serviced offices, but as the world has become more dynamic and speed and flexibility is an ever important part of business planning so serviced offices have continued to appeal and grow as a bigger % of the occupier market.
Q. You recently acquired some centres from MLS. Do you plan any further expansion in the next 12 months?
We have currently 5 new business centres projects under negotiation and we aim over the next 12 – 18 months to add a further three to four thousand new workstations to the market, mainly in London.
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3 Responses to “NeedOfficeSpace interviews David Alberto, CEO at Avanta Offices”
By Business on Nov 9, 2009 | Reply
The important part of establishing good productivity within a virtual office is that a series of rules and regulations must be created for all employees and freelancers to follow. These rules may include payroll policies, timesheet documentation and submission, protocols for client contact and interpersonal correspondence, and the development of rules concerning use of the virtual office website and databases. The important thing is to make sure that the rules which you create are both fair and reasonable, so that they can help personal productivity to flourish instead of causing it to stagnate due to policies which are too strict.