One of the successful policies that businesses have applied is to minimize investment costs for offices, choosing small, cheap offices instead of large, expensive offices.
The economic recession that continued to persist in 2013 forced many businesses to downsize or declare bankruptcy due to their inability to maintain their minimum operating costs. Among them, many “sober” businesses implemented a “belt-tightening” policy and continued to grow thanks to that. One of the successful policies that businesses have applied is to minimize investment costs for offices, choosing small, cheap offices instead of large, expensive offices.
After many times searching for a place to rent a room in District 1, Ms. Nguyen Thi Trang, representative of Kaolin Vietnam Co., Ltd., finally decided to choose to rent a shared office service to save costs. For her, spending only from 1 million to more than 2.5 million VND per month to have a working place in the city center with many professional services such as reception, mail delivery, private meeting room... is a very reasonable cost and a smart choice for a business with a compact apparatus.
A corner of G-Office's private office at Saigon Trade Center (37 Ton Duc Thang, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City)
The trend of small businesses, consulting firms and independent activists to use shared offices (virtual offices) has been increasing, especially since the global economic crisis in 2008. In Vietnam, virtual office rental services became known in 2007 when International Media Network Joint Stock Company officially provided G-Office service - shared offices for newly established small businesses, consulting firms, representative offices...
Previously, in 2006, Regus, a company specializing in virtual office rental services worldwide, also set up a business office in Vietnam. However, the target audience that this company aims at is mainly Vietnamese enterprises investing abroad or foreign enterprises looking for development opportunities in Vietnam. Up to now, the whole country has nearly 40 enterprises providing this service, but the leader is still G-Office with the number of customers who have registered to use the service reaching nearly 2,400 enterprises. Customers come to G-Office because this provider has virtual office rental locations in prime locations - Indochina Building, No. 4, District 1 and Saigon Trade Center, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. In addition, G-Office is also trusted by customers for its modern office equipment and dedicated, professional service style.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Xuan Hoa, Director of Hoa Tin Company said: “My company has been operating for 5 years now, and has changed its location 3 times for many reasons such as inconvenient business locations, increasing rental costs... In difficult economic times, the cost of business premises is too high, making my business not as effective as expected. That is why I chose G-Office's shared office service”.
Not to mention the additional initial fixed investments such as: rental deposit, office redesign, equipment purchase... but for some reason having to move or the landlord taking back the premises, the above fixed investments are almost lost. For these reasons, more and more businesses are looking to shared office rental services.
According to the assessment of Dr. - economic expert Dinh The Hien: "Virtual office is a new product with many utilities, helping start-up businesses reduce a lot of costs and is developing strongly in Vietnam as well as other countries. The Enterprise Law does not stipulate that the business address must also be a workplace and the workplace must have a minimum area of square meters. At the same time, up to this point, there is no circular or decree that does not allow businesses to operate virtual offices". Therefore, virtual office rental service is a "rescue" measure for many small businesses, representative offices ... in difficult economic times like today.
