Office Space News
Pacific Business Centers Reports Record Quarter
Published April 15th, 2009 by Jennifer LeClaire
The Regus Group isn’t the only player in the executive office suites industry to see growth. Its west coast rival Pacific Business Centers (PBC) is growing strong in the first quarter of 2009.
Pacific Business Centers is well known in California a provider of premium on-demand offices. The company just announced record level activity in the first three months of the year.
“This was a 40 percent quarter,” says Nicholas DeGraff, PBC’s marketing manager. “Inquiries and new deals were up 40 percent from a year ago and 40 percent of visitors touring our facilities ended up signing a deal!”
Start-Ups Drive Growth
Not surprisingly, PBC reported that start-ups are a key growth driver for its 14 executive office suites across Northern California. PBC offers what it calls “instant offices” throughout the San Francisco Bay area under three different names: Pacific Business Centers, American Executive Centers and Home Office Business centers.
Specifically, the company offers locations in Sacramento, San Francisco, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek, Oakland, Burlingame, San Mateo, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, San Jose and Palo Alto.
Even though start-ups and professional firms still make up a large part of the demand for PBC’s furnished offices, the company says interest from large corporations has surged. PBC figures compelling economics and the need for greater flexibility in an uncertain environment is driving the demand among larger companies.
“This quarter, immediately following our previous all-time record quarter, is a powerful validation of our WaaS approach, or Workplace-as-a-Service,” says Laurent Dhollande, CEO of PBC. “When the economy is tough, companies realize they can no longer offer to waste their resources in sub-utilized dedicated office space and they value the real time expansion and contraction flexibility on-demand offices provide.”
Pushing Cloud Officing
PBC’s latest initiatives, including WaaS, GoODWORK and Cloud Officing, seem to be paying dividends for the company. PBC reports that the average amount of time a worker is physically present in a dedicated office ranges between 25 percent and 40 percent. As PBC sees it, that’s a waste of an expensive asset seeing that facilities and corporate real estate costs represent the second-largest expense for most companies.
This utilization ratio can even be worse for sales people or customer service-related professionals, PBC says. The company reports that the need to slash occupancy costs, along with a desire to reduce carbon footprint by bringing the workplace close to where people live, are driving corporate interest for PBC’s GoODWORK initiative.
“We call this paradigm Cloud Officing,” Dhollande says. “Like Cloud Computing in the technology arena, Cloud Officing is all about making an expensive infrastructure available at a reduced cost under a utility model. The idea is to provide a low overhead workplace solution, on a hosted, pay-per-use, and ubiquitous basis.”
PBC has launched the concept at its 14 locations and plans to deploy and manage thousands of on-demand locations around the globe. The company will start expanding its initial Northern California market in the middle of this year.
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Melanie Jones April 15th, 2009 at 8:52 am
It’s good to see that Regus isn’t a fluke in the serviced office industry. It seems executive office suites are doing well in many markets and under many brand names. I guess it’s just a matter of whether or not the flexible office space can sustain the growth when the markets recover and companies look for long-term leases again.
Maggie Correta April 15th, 2009 at 8:59 am
I think PBC makes it hard with all its acronyms. I think the company is definitely on to something with its Workplace as a service model, but the acronyms for serviced office space are cryptic and many confuse a lot of people. I guess if their target audience is techies, they’ll be alright.
Bill Brookshire April 15th, 2009 at 9:01 am
The article says, “PBC reports that the average amount of time a worker is physically present in a dedicated office ranges between 25 percent and 40 percent.” How does Pacific Business Centers know this? Where are they getting their data? I think we have to be careful about throwing around numbers in the serviced office industry that sound good but aren’t backed up.
Elizabeth Sanchez April 16th, 2009 at 7:22 am
I am not surprised that larger corporations are seeing the value in executive office suites. With all the downsizing, it’s the perfect time for companies to reevaluate their office space needs. With executive office suites, there is the much-trumpeted flexibility and that’s what everyone is looking for right now.
Rob Zeus April 17th, 2009 at 8:54 am
That’s a good point about the data, bill. Would be great if someone from PBC would chime in and let us know how they came up with the figure about “the average amount of time a worker is physically present in a dedicated office ranges between 25 percent and 40 percent.” I’m not saying it’s not true. I’d just like to know how they came up with that. It sounds very low to me. I sit my office every day almost all day, and so do most of he people I know.