Coworking Management Tool

[Paz Chentnik]

Wondering what everyone's favorite coworking management tool is. I have been playing around with Cobot and although there are lots of reviews on it, it seems a bit restricting. I was wondering what you use?

Also looking for a mobile booking integration platform and looks like bookify is the way to go, but again wondering your experience and if I am on the right track. 

Thanks!

[Jerome Chang]

Actually, COSHARE.co plans to host a webinar on this very topic.

And in most cases, these apps manages a coworking space AND enables booking.

Tuesday, Aug 12, 12pm PT / 3pm ET

http://fuze.me/22755703

Phone: (201) 479-4595

Meeting Number:  22755703

Panelists:

Sam Rosen from DeskTime

Matthew Weiner from HappyDesk

[coworking space owner, TBD]

JEROME CHANG

Mid-Wilshire
5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) | Los Angeles CA 90036 
ph: (323) 330-9505

Downtown
529 S. Broadway, Suite 4000 (@Pershing Square) | Los Angeles CA 90013 
ph: (213) 550-2235 

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[Ramon Suarez]

We have built our own because we don't fit in and of them, but my favorite services out there are Cobot and Nexudus.

[Jorge Vargas]

We are migrating to cobot as we speak and so far it's been good. Their customer support is great and they have given us a good solution for all our "quirks" so far. So I'll say that even though it looks a little bit restricted they are actually very flexible. You just need to learn a bit of "the cobot way". 

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 3:24 AM, Ramon Suarez <ra...@betacowork.com> wrote:

We have built our own because we don't fit in and of them,  but my favorite services out there are Cobot and Nexudus.

[Janelle Doll]

We used Cobot in the past -- they continue to release great features but as you mentioned, it can be limiting and wasn't a fit for our coworking space overall. We currently use Nexudus and I couldn't be happier with the features of the software (they've thought of EVERYTHING and are incredibly deliberate in their development) and the responsiveness of the Nexudus team is amazing. 

[George Aye]

First time poster, long time lurker here.

We've been using Cobot at our place in Chicago for the last six months and it's been great. It's help us send invoices for rent as well as reserve rooms and other resources. 

George

http://loganshare.com

[Ender Baykal]

We first used Cobot, and it was OK. However, once our business has started to grow, Cobot was not meeting our needs any more. For that reason, we have switched to Nexudus which we believe is great so far. Let me tell you good things Nexudus has:

- Great customer service (We usually hear back from them within minutes, not even hours) and they are very helpful in terms of providing you with thorough solutions instead of referring a help desk page website etc.

- They are always open to new ideas and they would love to hear your feedback, if they think a new feature would be helpful for other spaces, too, then they take the action right away

- I like their user search tool based on tags (expertise of members). For example, our members now can look up other members in our space based on what they look for, such as "marketing", "JAVA" etc.

Overall, we are satisfied with Nexudus so far. Of course, every tool needs improvements as Nexudus does. For example, payment system which is the billing processes are kind of complicated, so it'd be awesome if they work on it a little.

[Maximilian Blass]

what does your own system look like? is it open source?

[Ramon Suarez]

Proprietary and adapted 100% to our situation. It has dashboards with latest members, try-outs, leaving, revenue, plans, etc. Users manage their plans directly in a secured section and it is integrated with our wordpress. If you go to http://www.betacowork.com/coworkers/  you can see the profiles of the members that have chosen to make their profiles public. 

We are thinking about making a hosted service for other spaces, but that means tens of thousands of investment for the developer plus a lot of work by the team to do the project management. 

Ramon Suarez
Serendipity Accelerator, Betacowork
Author: http://coworkinghandbook.com
email & hangouts: ra...@betacowork.com

Phone: +3227376769

GSM: +32497556284

Twitter:http://twitter.com/ramonsuarez
Skype: ramonsuarez
Try coworking: http://betacowork.com

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[Anca Mosoiu]

Hi Ramon,

We're working on a WordPress / iPad based solution here at Tech Liminal.  Perhaps we can share notes sometime.

Cheers,

Anca.

-=-=-=-=-
Anca Mosoiu  | Tech Liminal
an...@techliminal.com
M: (510) 220-6660
W: http://techliminal.com  | T: @techliminal | F: facebook.com/techliminal

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[Ramon Suarez]

No problem. We can even talk about it in Lisbon for Coworking Europe. 

Ramon Suarez
Serendipity Accelerator, Betacowork
Author: http://coworkinghandbook.com
email & hangouts: ra...@betacowork.com

Phone: +3227376769

GSM: +32497556284

Twitter:http://twitter.com/ramonsuarez
Skype: ramonsuarez
Try coworking: http://betacowork.com

[Yann Heurtaux]

Would attend an unconference item about it in Lisbon with great pleasure. Testing stuff until end of Sept., we will have to make a choice quickly. As a bio-hackerspace + coworking space, we have pretty specific needs.

[Miguel Calero]

Totally agree with you Janelle! We had used Cobot, now Nexudus for three months and is working flawlessly. Most important, support and development team are amazing and really walk a mile in your shoes as coworking space.

For some time we thought about developing our own software. IMHO, in the short term may be challenging and adequate to have your own software, but trying to figure out how to manage maintainance in the long term made us giving away that option.

[Wayne Maceyka]

Hello! There are a few small spaces here in VT that are in similar phases of “starting” and it feels like a good opportunity to share a space management tool to allow focus on community and facilitate fantastic member experience - and easily interconnect the spaces for current members and prospective members. Do Cobot and Nexudus help attract new members? How does Proximity Space stack up? I like their white label commitment, maintaining each space’s identity (VERY important in VT!) while reaching more people.

Thank you!

[lhtorres]

Curious to hear Wayne: what are the conditions that make it a good opportunity to share a space management tool - what are the specific benefits you see of these spaces using the same tool? In other words, what specific problem(s) are you looking to solve? What elements of the member experience can be made more fantastic by this technology?

Also, do you have data on the relative size of each space, and how much does membership size inform our technology choices?

[Wayne Maceyka]

Lars:

Good questions. I'm gathering some of the info you're referring to. I'm wagering that the desire to manage the back end/ops may not be the same across spaces. For those, just getting going, something "off the shelf" might be helpful. Heck, promoting to engage potential members is not always top of mind or possible depending upon the space manager/owner/team's bandwidth.

Also, the potential to attract visitors that are not familiar with shared office/coworking concept, for the spaces that want to be part of it, could be helpful.

I've received 0 input so far on tools. Hmm.

Wayne

[iv...@officernd.com]

Hi Wayne,

most tools on the market claim that they put the focus on the community and member experience, but this aspect of the flexible workspace management platforms still hasn't made significant progress beyond the marketing slogans.

Most of the current platforms do a good job in automating your day-to-day tasks and also reducing the operational hassle around billing / invoicing / membership management, etc.

I'm happy to hear that you are looking member experience and community engagement. As far as I'm concerned the competition in the flexible workspace industry is picking up speed and those two things can be a real differentiator.

Talking about member experience and community engagement, I would suggest looking at the following:

 - Member experience - based on my experience the most frustrating part of moving to a new coworking space is the onboarding process and some minor day to day pains that can ruin the overall impression of your members about the space. Thus I believe a great way to improve this experience is by making it as hassle-free as possible. One way to do that is through automation - provide automated door access, provide internet access with member login details & also use it for automatic check-in in the space. 

Also, make sure that there is an intuitive members portal that can allow members to self-service themselves as much as possible - checking out events, reporting issues, booking meetings rooms, finding other members & companies in the space, online checkout for services and membership plans, etc. If possible also provide them with a native mobile app that they can use for easy access to any of the self-service functions.

- Focus on community - a first step in the creation of a vibrant community would be to make sure that people communicate with each other and have the chance to mingle with colleagues from other companies. Over here you can look for integrated event management, integration with external calendars, intuitive members directory with interactive profiles, ability to send messages to everybody announcing events/new services/new discounts/extras, etc.

In terms of attracting new members. If you invest in some of the activities mentioned above you should definitely receive positive feedback from your current members which will inevitably lead to good rep and more new members.

In regards to some of the options, you have mentioned - Nexudus have a pretty rich feature set that will probably cover some of the things that I mentioned above. However, some users find the interface a bit overwhelming, thus I'm not certain if newly created spaces can take full benefit of all the functionality. I cannot comment on Proximity Space since I haven't used them. If you are looking at other alternatives that provide all essential functionality + white-labeling and multi-location support feel free to check out https://officernd.com/ as well.

I hope this helps you out.

Full disclosure: I'm part of the OfficeR&D team.

[David Lundy]

Wayne,

I have been a Proximity Space user for about a year now and I can vouch for the their white label commitment - such a great thing to have a service provider want to promote you, not themselves.

A little bit about Proximity, and then I will let everyone pitch questions:

Besides creating their software platform from scratch, they also own and manage multiple coworking locations.  And no, they don't want to compete with you - it just seems that they have morphed from owners to owners / software & hardware developers.

Onboarding is simple.  I manage the tech at Evolve Workplace (evolveworkplace.com) and in my previous life I was a banker/real estate guy (yes, I feel much better now!!).  I like tech, but I'm not a developer and the system is intuitive and easy to use.  However, the Proximity system does allow for some serious granularity when managing the membership levels (access to the space, free conference room hours, discounts, one-time/recurring add-ons, etc.) that with a bit of use is a great way to customize your memberships and space use.  Also, the system allows you to make a ton of "hidden" memberships (not seen by the public when signing up) for those one off deals that you may want to create to fit the needs of certain members.

Membership experience is straightforward.  Members become free "community members" with only a name, e-mail and password.  Once in the system, you can market to these free members via e-mail to let them know about community events, seminars, etc.  Once a person selects a paying membership and walks through the simple Proximity app (branded with your logo, not Proximitys) setup for their mobile device - (https://help.proximity.space/faq-s-collection/saving-door-app-key-to-your-phone), they can easily access the membership portal and manage their "Profile" (great way to market yourself throughout the Proximity network of coworking locations - great for solopreneurs), create and manage conference room bookings, review and update membership levels and view historical billing and add/edit payment sources - works with both credit/debit cards as well as ACH (save on those darn credit card processing fees).

Door Controllers - this is one of features that really blows my members away!!!  With the Proximity app on your mobile device (again, branded for your company, not Proximity), our members can open interior/exterior doors up to 24 hours a day, 365 days per year based on settings you as a space manager can edit.  Again, here is where the granularity of the system really shines as you can basically manage access for any membership.  And, the app is simple to use - just open the app and circles representing each door the member has access to appear.  Images of locks appear in each circle and show if the door is open or not.  If not, members press the circle/lock corresponding to the door they wish to open and boom, door opens for something like 15 seconds and then relocks.  And on a security note, all door access is logged on the space administrator's dashboard so beyond your camera system, you can see who has open locked doors in your space!!

I could go on and on, but will leave off hear and field questions as much as I can.

Be well,

Dave