Is working from home the new way forward for engineering SME”s?

Phil Black - PII Editor 20/03/2014

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Switching to a virtual office has proved to be a smart move for spray nozzle specialists BETE LTD saving them around £50,000 a year by encouraging staff to work from home and has resulted in the company being shortlisted for The Guardian Newspaper – Small Business Award. Whilst working from home is commonplace for people in many different business sectors, the recent significant leaps in communications technology brings even more advantages to the option of working from a fully functioning and connected ‘home office’.

Betes’ spray nozzles have a diverse range of applications, from putting out fires, processing food, humidifying wine warehouses they have been used in space, the Arctic and in the depths of the ocean. The company has a 60 year history but thanks to recent leaps in technology it works more effectively, saving money in the process. It has reaped the financial and environmental benefits of switching to a virtual office allowing staff to work remotely while maintaining the same high reputation.

Bete estimates cost savings can be as much as £50,000 a year for its virtual model and it keeps a close eye on these savings through in-house research. The usual choice for an expanding small business is to buy or lease expensive offices with the associated overheads. Marketing director Ivan Zytynski, whose father founded the company as a home-based business, estimates that the average UK office worker costs up to £4,000 a year in terms of office space, based on an employee using 13.5sq m. He comments, “As the business expanded we decided to take a different approach, rather than buying or committing to office space, we decided to create a virtual office, with employees connecting in via a VPN (virtual private network) to a server”.

Using a cloud-based system has increased its IT costs but the company says the benefits far outweigh the outlay on traditional office based server infrastructure.

“We operate a cloud-based system, which enables us to take on more employees working from home. We spend an average of 20% to 30% more on IT than an average small business, or £15,000 a year, but our net gain is around £25,000”, says Zytynski.

Bete is also proud of the environmental benefits, estimating that it saves around 8 tonnes of CO2 a year through its virtual office model. Zytynski says “Physical office space is very inefficient in terms of energy consumption, with 10 employees Bete would, if it had offices, consume about 23,000 kWh of energy per year powering that office”.

Like most businesses, the company website is seen as the default first point of contact for a potential customer, however traditional account management still matters, even in the digital age. When you land on the contact page of Betes’ website, it stresses the importance of ‘human-to-human’ interaction. Zytynski says, “When you call us you will not have to negotiate a difficult, frustrating maze of telephone options, your call will be answered by a polite, helpful and knowledgeable human”. He added, ”We use our website as a primary marketing tool, thus cutting back on customer visits. According to in-house research, the 60,000 miles per year saved (from visiting customers) at 40p per mile, equates to an annual fuel expense of £24,000”.

In summary Bete believe that their virtual office model can be the way forward for many small businesses, as it not only encourages flexibility within the workplace for employees, it is also better for the environment, given that the daily commute is taken out of the equation.

Nevertheless, Zytynski thinks the UK workplace is a long way off becoming virtual: “There seems to be a very strong office based culture in the UK that is difficult to change, some employers let their employees work from home on an occasional basis, but this is not the same thing and it is not cost-efficient as the employees’ office space is still running while he or she is working from home, thus the company is maintaining and heating two office spaces”.

For more information contact BETE Ltd. Lewes, East Sussex Tel: +44 (0) 1273 400092 or contact: Ivan Zytynski via Email: ivan@beteuk.com or visit www.bete.co.uk