Yardi sat down with Janthea Griffin, operations director for 2-Work, to see how Yardi Kube has helped them at their Leeds location, Bank House.
Yardi – Please tell us about your role at 2-Work
Griffin – So, as the operations director for 2-Work, I’m one of the co-managing directors. I look at the daily, weekly, monthly financials, sales stats etc. I’m always looking at the first point of contact when somebody enquires with us and checking the customer journey. What does that roadmap look like? How is their experience once they’re signed up as a member? What then as a customer does that journey look like, where are the various different touch points and seeing what we can do better to further enhance their experience.
I think about how we can make the service we offer less labour-intensive, but still a great journey for that member. And that’s where Yardi comes into play, from booking in and reserving a desk – that’s my role – I’m creating the blueprint to then go and roll out elsewhere and make sure we’re super-efficient and that functionality is there. Making sure we feed back to our partners, how can we be slicker and stronger and create a tighter, streamlined operation – that’s the best way to describe my role at 2-Work.
Yardi – When you were looking for co-working software, what was it that made Yardi stand out in particular?
Griffin – The key thing that stood out for Yardi was the fact it was kind of cradle-to-grave. It was a system that was going to help us manage an enquiry when it lands as we’ve got the CRM there. It helps us manage the leads coming in through to our client signing the contract and moving through to the ongoing customer communication.
Having door access control was a big part of it as well as it makes the whole process a lot slicker. It was the fact that it wasn’t two, three or four systems that we needed to integrate. Yardi offered us something from start to finish – it was a complete end-to-end solution.
Yardi – Were there any issues you had to manage at the start?
Griffin – I think the main issue was trying to onboard during lockdown as we couldn’t have face-to-face training, so it was pretty much all completed through Zoom. However, it wasn’t a case of having onboarding issues – we ensured we had managers and assistant managers in the training process to become super users on Yardi Kube.
We plan to use Yardi for our next flex space and we know that one size doesn’t always fit all. We had to do a couple of workarounds and Yardi has included those in the deployment plan that will be released as part of the next update. They’ve been incredibly helpful whilst we’ve worked with them and we have constantly provided feedback on how the software is working for us.
Yardi – How has Yardi Kube helped you achieve since implementing the software?
Griffin – We didn’t have any software before we started with Yardi Kube – but it does what it says on the tin. It allows us to be user-friendly as an operation and put us a step ahead as it’s quite advanced. Other operations may still have receptionists behind a desk that welcomes a client and manually books them into a meeting room. The feedback we get from clients is that it’s really easy to book a meeting room and book other services as well.
Remembering back to the days where I used to bill the clients and it would take one to two days a month – and to get all those invoices through to make sure that they’re right – that’s the one key thing that Yardi does do as it’s all automated, it’s all visible, it’s all there. Clients can check in at any point at a click of a button and the invoices are going through.
Yardi – How has it benefited your marketing, operations or accounting teams?
Griffin – I think the system has really benefited sales as it’s our lead management system – it’s our sales database. The platform also allows us to reduce overheads and manage everything with a lighter headcount, which is key in any business, but we also want to make sure it doesn’t hinder the customer experience.
The system lets us know what the clients have been billed and we’re working with Yardi to have our accounting system integrated. But the other thing that’s recently been introduced is the visitor management software – that’s quite key for us. When a co-worker comes in and they only take five passes a month and they check-in as a visitor, it will knock off one of their day passes.
That’s a piece of development that’s worked really well for us. It was music to our ears as we were using a different visitor management system before.
Yardi – What kind of KPIs do you look at whilst using the software?
Griffin – The KPIs that we look at are the number of leads coming in, conversion sales, conversions and occupancy as well as revenue stats. Then there’s the revenue stats. So, a lot of our day-to-day is looking at that dashboard. Yardi allows us to pull out multiple reports – we can go in at any point and get the report we need.
We can capture everything. We can also look at, what does that forward order book look like in line with the occupancy as well? Those are the key things that we look at.
Yardi – What were your main reasons for choosing Leeds and opening Bank House?
Griffin – When the opportunity of Bank House came up, we knew that it is a great central location and an iconic building in Leeds. You can’t miss it. But also, the location is central and close to the train station. Corporate businesses may want a 30-desk office or a 50-desk office on a monthly, quarterly or annual contract. So, we saw a gap in the market to be able to offer ultimate flexibility but take on larger deals.
We pride ourselves on creating a community of like-minded people that want to work in an environment where it’s comfortable and relaxed. Not everyone wants someone playing on a ping pong table next to you. So, we offer a relaxed but professional environment and provide a good balance.
Part of what 2-Work is about is creating a physical community, but also an online community, as you don’t have to be at the location all the time. We do online and physical events and try to offer our members something different – a little bit over and above what they might get somewhere else. It might be a business steerer, or mental health and well-being steerer. We’ve also partnered with local gyms and a local mental health charity.
We like to work with local businesses, which is why we’ve partnered with various bars and restaurants as well to offer our clients a varied experience. It’s important to us to not only offer a desk and a chair, we want our spaces to be somewhere you can come and work but break away and get that work-life balance.
Yardi – We know you’ll be opening more sites soon; do you have any lessons learned from your experience with Bank House?
Griffin – I think a lot of the lessons we learnt were, we can’t control a global pandemic as we opened in the latter part of lockdown. We did have to roll with it but it gave us more time to get thoroughly onboarded with Yardi. For the next location, our intention is to partner with Yardi and schedule in-depth face-to-face training so we can dedicate more time to the learning process.
With the market right now, people don’t necessarily want to take on a five- or ten-year lease. What we’ve learnt is, you can’t predict the future and determine what is or isn’t going to happen. What is most important to us, and cheesy as it may sound, is helping our clients grow. If they need something, we’re there to assist them. We want it to be and feel like an environment you’d want to come to as that’s what brings people back.
Yes, people will grow and maybe outgrow a space and move on, but then you get word-of-mouth and they share how it’s a great place to work from. We want it to be serviced well and have good people there – that’s why we do the events and activities and partner with brand partners. It lets us ensure we have freebies to offer our clients all the time, whether that’s food, exercise classes or even a masseuse. In doing that right, the rest just flows.
About 2-Work
2-Work is a provider of flexible workspaces, creating hybrid environments with community, purpose, safety, health and well-being at the core of its delivery. Its multi-family group of companies currently manage properties in over 25 cities with an established infrastructure to cover the whole of the UK & Ireland. The flexible workspace provider selected Yardi Kube to provide Space and Wi-Fi management of its Grade II listed building, Bank House, located in Leeds City Centre. 2-Work is a new hybrid, community-focused workspace operator and is part of a growing trend of businesses managing flexible workspaces on behalf of commercial landlords.
Discover Yardi Kube’s end-to-end solution for flexible working
Yardi Kube’s single connected solution, including software and mobile apps, provides an end-to-end platform that allows you to automate your space with a flexible workspace management platform. You can easily manage prospects, members and operations, which helps to simplify daily operations with an all-in-one solution for coworking locations and flexible workspaces.
See how you can automate your space with Yardi’s all-in-one flexible workspace solution, Yardi Kube Space Management.
Contact us below to book a demo.