Turn! Turn! Turn! Written by Pete Seeger • Copyright © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, T.R.O. Inc.
For WILMOTH, we are at a significant point in our business history. We are gathering stones together and making a change long contemplated, planned and considered. At the beginning of November, we will be operating from a different location. In fact, many different locations. The world has turned and we believe it is time to turn with it. First, a brief history.
History
When I first formed our company in 1994, we were an outgrowth of a home-building business where I was part owner. My partner and I made a decision to separate businesses. We continued to share office space while I began to find a niche working with banks in the foreclosure arena and selling my former partner's new build homes.
Eventually the new build business went away and I joined forces with another real estate broker. We rented an office on the north east side of Indy. As the foreclosure business grew, so did the requests from purchasers to provide property management. So, by 1996 we were learning our way into this new service.
In 2001 the person who is most instrumental to our success and longevity joined me in this adventure. My wife, Jennifer, obtained a real estate license and started learning everything. Before long, she was most capably running the day to day operations. With growth, we needed our own office and networking.
Offices
In 2002, we moved to the first WILMOTH Group office. We also hired IT people and created a network. We also created our own internal portal to manage our database of properties. This system is still used today and it is a difference maker when you choose WILMOTH.
Through the following 14 years we have moved to 2 different locations. Rewired offices, moved servers, and incurred a lot of costs. Housing lots of desks, server equipment, and related issues is a major cost of doing business. But it does not have to be that way anymore.
Turn! Turn! Turn!
About a year ago we made a decision to prepare for a move at the end of our lease. Our goal is to provide lots of flexibility in our office environment while not making any difference to our clients. As of Friday, October 28 our internal network and servers will be turned off. All of our data will reside "in the cloud." Any person, on any computer, when given the proper instructions and permissions, can work for our company from anywhere in the world!
With an expiring lease, and the changing needs of staff, we are making some big changes to our physical office environment. We have converted to an internet phone system so any employee just takes a phone with them and communicates as if they are in the office. We are using messaging apps that coordinate our communications. We just all may not be sitting 10 feet from each other.
The "New" Office
In Florida for almost ten years we have used shared office space and a connection to our network through something called terminal server. Essentially, we share a receptionist and have access to a conference room in Fort Myers and Tampa. Our staff work in the field, at home, wherever. We know this system can work as it has already been tested in these locations. In Indianapolis, we are going to be doing the same thing with one small twist.
Four of our team members will continue to work from an office space with internet access, a desk, and a multifunction office machine. The rest of us are working from home offices. I have been testing this concept for most of this year, working out the kinks and we are ready.
Our official office address will be changing to:
10475 Crosspoint Blvd. Suite 250
Indianapolis, IN 46256.
The world has changed to a subscription environment. Long term commitments are a thing of the past with month to month subscriptions now being the norm. We will have flexibility like never before if we need to make further improvements. After a year of testing, I believe we are moving forward in a way that we will never look back.
How Does This Affect You?
I share all of this today because I want you to know of our official address change. I am certain you will see no other change from us. I believe we will actually get better with more ease of communication and management from more locations than just our locked-down office. If we need to meet at our office, no problem. We can also huddle up at a Starbucks!
Does this affect you? No it does not. If it does, the one year of testing will have sorely missed something. I do not want you to just decide to "drop in" the soon to be old office and wonder what happened to your management company!
I think our adaption to the cloud office environment will eventually serve all of our clients very well in many ways. With this change, some new technologies are going to become possible that we are starting to test. If successful, these will be a big part of our client interactions in the years to come.
If you find these changes do affect you, please let me know!
