Office Hub takes the effort out of finding and renting commercial property

Office Hub is an Australian business with one simple goal: revolutionise the way people rent office space around the world. For CEO and Founder Grant Philipp, this goal is a personal passion. Working for a serviced office space provider, Philipp was frustrated by the inefficiency of finding tenants. He received many leads through brokers, but they were often unqualified and came with poor data. The same leads were also sent to dozens of workspaces at once which led to leads being inundated with calls and emails.

As flexible office space increased in popularity, Philipp saw an opportunity to flip the traditional broker model on its head. “What was missing from the market was an effective solution for connecting workspaces and tenants, so I set up a website for listings and it grew from there,” said Philipp.

With the help of Salesforce, Office Hub has turned that website into a comprehensive solution for finding and leasing office space. It is also disrupting the real estate industry in key markets globally.

Office Hub grew quickly in Australia with prospective tenants appreciating the transparency of the online listings and the ease of finding the right workspace. Philipp wanted to build on the site’s popularity by adding new features and more automation. However, he was limited by the technologies he had at the time so he searched for something more flexible.

Salesforce was ideal as it provided a complete solution for rebuilding Office Hub's website and managing the end-to-end customer experience. It also offered high levels of security to help the company build trust with investors and gain more control of its data.

"We were no longer a startup and we needed a solution that would allow us to keep building and scaling our platform," said Philipp. “That flexibility is one of the reasons we chose Salesforce and we are yet to find anything it can’t do.”

With the move to Salesforce, Office Hub has taken its offering to the next level. It has rebuilt its website on Heroku which allows it to rapidly test and deploy new features. It also provides built-in monitoring which helps Office Hub ensure optimal site performance.

“Heroku allows us to focus on developing our product instead of managing devops and for a fast-growing startup like Office Hub, it is a major force multiplier. It lets us move fast and continually delight our customers,” said Philipp.

Now, when workspaces have available space, Office Hub immediately pushes a listing live on its website where it is promoted to tens of thousands of prospective tenants. The tenants can search for their ideal property using parameters such as location and number of desks. They can then shortlist their favourites or book tours. These include in-person or virtual tours which were added as an option during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Office Hub has designed its website to make this process as easy as possible for the tenant. What’s most game changing about Office Hub though is what’s happening below the surface. The company has streamlined workflow with Sales Cloud, Pardot, and number of connected applications. These include apps like Conga Composer and Adobe Sign which are used to manage license agreements as well as SMS-Magic which is used to send automated tour reminders.

Now when prospects search the website and book tours, Office Hub quickly gathers the information it needs to qualify them as leads and streamline their experience. Pardot helps to capture some of this data, including tenants’ contact details and recent property searches. Other information is pulled in from sources like LinkedIn which Office Hub has connected to its website using APIs.

“Within our industry, it is often a sprint to see who can book a tour first and one of the benefits Salesforce gives us is speed. We’re able to capture most of our lead data automatically which saves us around 20 minutes for each enquiry,” said Philipp.

Office Hub is also able to leverage its lead data to pre-populate 90 percent of proposals. This saves around one hour per proposal which equates to more than 6,000 hours per year. Proposals are then sent to workspace customers who can review them and add photos before sending them onto tenants. This not only saves time for customers, but helps drive the leasing process through to completion.

Office Hub is now analysing its data to optimise the customer journey. For example, by looking at metrics like page impressions and click-through rates, Office Hub can understand how the quality of photos or price point impact tenant interest. It can then inform workspaces how they can rank against competitors and advise them on how to improve.

“One of the reasons workspaces choose to list with us is because we provide them with the best knowledge. What we’re trying to do now is give them those ‘money can’t buy’ moments so they can reach out with the right offer to complete a deal or renewal,” said Philipp.

Philipp said the company’s benchmarks on pricing will be particularly valuable to workspace customers in places like the US and the UK as they build back their businesses post the pandemic. Office Hub is in the process of expanding to both places and anticipates having 60% of the UK market on its books by the end of 2021. All of this is currently managed with just one person on the ground in the UK, something which Philipp said would be impossible without Salesforce and all of the automation it provides.

Office Hub has its sights set on the USA next. It is a competitive market, but the company’s efficiencies and customer experience will help set it apart.

“There are a million brokers out there, but Salesforce has given us a competitive edge that others just don’t have,” said Philipp.