Office Space Advice
Alliance Business Centers Shares Vision for Industry
Published December 4th, 2009 by Jennifer LeClaire
If you’ve worked in serviced office space at some point in your career, you’ve probably run into an Alliance Business Centers Network (ABCN) partner. Alliance is a leading provider of executive suites, virtual offices and fully serviced office space with about 700 locations in 40 countries — and growing.
Alliance members represent a unique cross-section of successful veteran office business center and virtual office operators from around the world, including Pacific Business Centers, Regent, and Davinci Virtual. By networking, members can offer clients office space in diverse locations, as well as the economies of scale that come with the purchasing power of such a large network.
aBetterOffice.com sat down with Frank Cottle, founder, chairman and CEO of the ABCN, to discuss the driving philosophy behind the organization, its breadth of services, and its focus on training in this first installment of our series taking a closer look at this industry powerhouse.
What’s the driving philosophy of Alliance Business Centers Network?
ABCN is group of leading companies under one umbrella. This group is at the forefront, industry-wise, of providing not just services to the industry but education. ABCN takes an external view and goes outside of our own network to provide products and services on an industry-wide level. For example, we are the largest effective training organization in the industry on a global basis. We really believe that if Alliance is able to succeed on behalf of its membership, it also has to help the industry succeed overall.
ABCN touches so many aspects of the industry. Can you explain that?
You have to understand what I call the Alliance group of companies. There are different areas that we are actively involved in. First, there is the network company which is the Alliance Business Center Network. The focus of that company is to operate a franchise-like group, if you will, and to serve our members by providing them with a potentially 100 percent of all the products and services they might need to successfully operate their business – marketing services, sales services, HR services, product services, discount purchasing services, Web services, telephony services, etc. If a business center operator only wants to deal with one group, Alliance provides it. Our members can acquire products at substantial discounts over what they could acquire those products on their own for.
Training is so important. Tell us about the Alliance Academy.
The Alliance Academy teaches four to six public classes a month. These are Web-driven classes that are globally distributed. We also teach a variety of what we call ‘super sessions’ which are roving classes where a small team of trainers go into a single marketplace where there is a strong business center density and hold classes.
There’s also a lot of direct in-company training. That’s really where our core focus is – working with companies one-on-one. We currently have well over 100 classes that deal with every element of business center management, from owners and financial reporting and management systems and right down to the receptionist…top to bottom, multiple languages, multiple countries. We train as actively in Europe as we do here in North America.
Stay tuned for more from ABCN’s Frank Cottle.
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Bill Brookshire December 4th, 2009 at 6:48 am
Nice article. I think a lot of people in the industry don’t know the breadth of what ABCN does for the business center segment. In fact, they do even more than this. The training is definitely an important component and a great service to the industry. I look forward to learning more from Alliance.
Elizabeth Sanchez December 4th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Looks like ABCN has a monopoly, if you will, on business center services. If they don’t have a service available, they probably partner with somebody who does. This is very comprehensive. It is hard to imagine being a small to midsized executive suites operator that didn’t have to interface with ABCN on some level.