How Embassy House Found a One-Stop-Shop for All Workspace Management Needs

 

A Place to Connect and Grow 

Embassy House is a two-location coworking space in Stockholm. It welcomes people that want to work and grow their businesses together with a community of like-minded entrepreneurs around.

The mission of the workspace is to empower tenants, support prosperity, and drive innovation by offering flexible and convenient solutions to their businesses. Embassy House provides a solid set of amenities required for productive work, from affordable full-service desks, private offices, co-working lounges to office management and outsourcing services.

Here’s what Anders Nilsson, the Founder of Embassy House says about the unique concept of the project:

We set out on a journey to build a space catered towards startups and entrepreneurs. Short-term contracts were not a problem if it was reflected in us being able to provide affordable solutions. We´re tech-oriented and have a less premium approach and more of an atmosphere and community focus.

The Embassy House team started to think about using technology to make their processes more effective a couple of years ago and has been on the lookout ever since.

Here is a brief list of challenges they were concerned about.

 

Issues to Be Resolved By Coworking Software 

• Too many disconnected tools

Being a modern technology-driven coworking space, Embassy House implemented a bunch of tools for efficient administration. Some of them are:

• Kisi
• Skedda
• Slack
• Facebook
• Mailchimp   

Since every tool is a standalone solution aimed at solving a single problem, there was no holistic management approach. Anders had to switch between different interfaces all the time, which slowed down the process instead of speeding it up.

Using all those tools, we had to administrate and handle too many places. We were dreaming to find a one-stop-shop that would finally put an end to the rush and thrashing about.—Anders Nilsson here and below unless otherwise stated.

• No self-service platform for members to book, purchase, and communicate 

The best way to automate repeated workflows is to make all workspace services available to members through an easy-to-use web or mobile apps so that they can book anything whenever they want. Before andcards, it was technically impossible to provide members with such a possibility because all the above-mentioned tools were not integrated into each other.

Therefore, some of the urgent workspace needs such as self-service bookings and communication inside the community were still not covered.

Besides, let’s not forget that all those disconnected tools were not free and needed to be paid for while failing to contribute to a better member experience or brand image.

The decision to adopt andcards came naturally as Anders didn’t want to disperse his attention across the systems anymore and finally concentrate all efforts on business growth and community happiness.

Let’s see how Embassy House addressed the biggest pain points in just a couple of months after adopting andcards.

 

A Single Platform for All Workspace Needs

• One app for members and administrators

The biggest Embassy nightmare of multi-tool operation has been chosen away immediately after implementing andcards. Actually, they got even more than expected—a single platform both administrators and members can use.

andcards doesn’t offer two separate solutions for members and managers, there is one single app both of them can use with a single difference in access permissions.

This is really convenient as members and managers are always on the same page and it’s really easy for Embassy House staff to understand the customer.

andcards artistically solved the demands we had with multiple systems and most importantly they listened to our feedback and really put in the effort to address each and every inquiry.

• Automation through self-service from day one

Embassy House did an amazing job by redesigning their customer path for the sake of better experience, full self-service, and automation.

Here’s how it looks now:

Right after signing up, a new member gets a couple of emails. One - inviting them to register in the Embassy white-label app provided by andcards, another - to set up an account with KISI (access control system) to unlock main entrances directly within the Embassy mobile app.

Anders considers the in-app door unlock as one of the essential components that contributes to a better member experience at Embassy House.

In-app door unlock functionality provided by andcards is an example of how the platform marries user experience with administration. Having all our services in one solution is a key to success for both us and our clients.

As soon as a quick registration process is finished, a customer gets access to all workspace products. I.e.: they can unlock the doors with a smartphone, book meeting rooms and desks in a tap, get information and communicate with other members via a corporate feed, apply for additional services and benefits, pay membership fees, join events, pre-register guests, and more.

Anders even created a beautiful Embassy House Members App Guide that shows tenants how it works and how easy it is to get everything they want without asking the manager’s help.

andcards solution is so intuitive that most people just get into it immediately. Self-service members’ apps didn't create any extra need for support. After a week we noticed that we had fewer support errands. Now, a month in we have people using andcards apps more actively than our prior solutions and we see a better engagement.

• One-stop-shop for all administration needs

Since members use a self-service platform for literally everything, administrators don’t have to manage bookings, open doors, or spend a ton of time onboarding newcomers. They just supervise all the processes from a single place, refer members to the app in 95% of situations, and send monthly bills that are automatically generated by the system as well.

Customers are very positive about andcards app. All Embassy services are at their fingertips, very little onboarding support is required, I believe it’s safe to say that everything on the app sells itself.

All administrative tasks can now be performed via a smartphone, so Embassy managers have time and freedom to move around the space, interact with members, facilitate networking and connections, make sure that everyone is happy, and take other actions necessary for stable revenue growth.

 

Early Results of andcards Introduction

Embassy House started to use andcards recently but they already report many positive transformations they are happy about.

• Easy adoption and immediate positive changes 

It took only 2 days to get andcards up and running to replace all the tools that were previously used, which is really fast. No additional training was required for members and managers to start using the platform. In just 1 week, the number of support queries has reduced. In just 1 month customers started to use the Embassy app more actively than any other solution before.

We went into this with a mindset of replacing all the old things. And we did this in two days. andcards solution turned out to be so noob-friendly that both members and managers started to use it at once. In just a week the number of support tickets decreased and in a month people started to engage with the app actively. We didn’t experience that with any other solution.

• One app to solve it all

In the opinion of Anders Nilsson, the main benefits of andcards for small spaces like Embassy House are convenience, automation of workflows, and a unified platform that covers the most of the coworking space needs. They stopped switching between the interfaces and now run their business smoothly from one single place.

It all comes down to convenience, automation, and having one solution to solve many different needs. We were looking for such an all-in-one solution and now we enjoy its benefits.

• 50% less time on members’ support

Automation of the operational routines provided by andcards platform allowed Embassy House to cut in half managers’ time previously spent on members’ onboarding. Now administrators can just show the app to the customers and rest assured that members have everything they need in just a few taps.

We´ve had the ability to streamline the onboarding process and shorten that time by almost half. Most importantly, we can refer members to the app in almost all situations—it´s a smooth and great addition to our offering.

• Bright perspectives and focus on user experience

The Embassy House team is actively working on full andcards adoption as this will allow increasing the value of their membership even more and free even more time on improving their product composition and member experience.

We aim to continue adding more services and features to increase the value of our service and we also know that andcards is releasing cool additions regularly, so we see this as a perfect match. By taking administrative hassles off our shoulders, andcards allows us focus on member experience and we are planning to keep this course in the future.