How to Successfully Relocate Your Business
The decision to move a business to another state or county is a major one. Whether you are starting over in greener pastures or taking the next logical steps as your operation grows, neither the decision to move nor the choice of a site to relocate to should be taken lightly.
Let’s look at what’s involved in relocating a business, and how tools such as MapBusinessOnline can help you make more informed choices.
Why Relocate Your Business?
The first question you should ask before relocating a business is: Why? Moving a business is something that should have a clearly defined purpose. It should fit into your overall strategic plan in a logical, compelling way. Some reasons for relocating include:
- Taking advantage of cheaper rents, labor costs, tax rates or other benefits
- Expanding to a new market, or moving closer to an existing customer base
- Attracting more qualified employees
- Meeting rising production demands with a larger facility
- Meeting criteria for strategic expansion plans
Ultimately, relocating a business will cost money and time, and present a substantial risk. Before making a decision, consider the overall viability of your business as it stands today. Are you giving your local customers what they want? Are there ways to lower your overhead expenses or increase your productivity you haven’t thought of? Have you explored the possibility of alternative working arrangements that will make it easier to retain quality employees? If your current practices are sound, making the move will be far less risky.
Getting Ready to Move: Site Selection
If it really is time to move your business to a new location, start researching potential sites early, and be wary of the mistakes many organizations make at this stage. One of the best ways to do this is with business mapping software like MapBusinessOnline.
MapBusinessOnline makes site selection easier by helping you to:
- Understand local demographics. MapBusinessOnline gives you accurate, meaningful information about who lives near a potential relocation site. MBO uses up-to-date census data to give you a picture of the age, income, average household size and education levels of your potential customers – and what direction these important metrics are trending in.
- Understand your competition. MapBusinessOnline can also show you where other players in your industry are located. Find out who’s shopping where, identify underserved areas and avoid direct competition with local institutions that have a loyal customer base.
- Develop a sales accountability plan. If your salesforce is mobile, MapBusinessOnline lets you clearly demarcate territories in a new location so you can plan your staffing needs accordingly. The more effectively you can deploy your team, the easier it will be to establish yourself in a new state or county, with clear areas of responsibility established on day one.
- Anticipate accessibility problems. As a newcomer, it can be difficult to picture how people travel around your area. If you depend on walk-in traffic, you need to be in a location that’s easy to get to and ideally, on people’s way to and from work. MapBusinessOnline lets you visualize drive time areas so you can easily estimate potential walk-in traffic. You can also use it to optimize delivery routes.
These are just a few of the many ways an investment in MapBusinessOnline can benefit businesses planning to relocate. Once you’re established, keep using MBO to track demographic changes over time, refine the products or services you offer, or for strategic planning, and to establish sustainable growth just the way you planned your move.
See it in action for yourself with a free 1-month trial of MapBusinessOnline. Sign up today or speak with a representative for more details.
