Vlad Craioveanu is the Co-founder of Impact Hub Bucharest, the first coworking space launched in Bucharest, in 2012. Impact Hub is an organization that supports the entrepreneurial development of positive social initiatives within a global community and it has two physical locations in our capital city, in the University and Floreasca area.
Impact Hub Bucharest is also the first coworking space we partnered with in order to offer their future clients in Floreasca a completely remote, end-to-end visualization solution. Our team is also working from Impact Hub, which made this collaboration even more special.
We are delighted to announce the launch of a 3D showcasing platform for Impact Hub Floreasca, available here, and we wanted to mark this moment with an exclusive interview with Vlad Craioveanu.
What made you choose the Bright Spaces solution?
In order to attract more office clients for whom they can facilitate meaningful growth and connecting experiences, Impact Hub Bucharest decided on integrating a modern, digital showcasing solution:
“Bright Spaces is a solution that meets our need to simplify the lead generation process. It basically offers an interactive 3D rendering solution for your space and choosing an office space – which is our case – becomes easier through the CRM integration.
We are very enthusiastic about this project because this platform will facilitate selling our spaces to clients who now need more digital options and for whom it is more difficult to come and visit our spaces. They can choose the one they want through 3D visualization and then, they can ask for a specific offer for that space.
Furthermore, for almost 10 years, Impact Hub has been a supporter of local entrepreneurial initiatives, so we are extremely happy to collaborate with the Bright Spaces team, who is also a member of our community.
For us, this pilot project is a combination of innovation, local entrepreneurship and new experiences, so we hope that it will become a usual practice in our projects.”
How was the collaboration?
“The team was open to all our suggestions about the coworking solution and we managed to implement most of them. We started from one point and brought significant improvements, based on the specifics of a coworking space.” says Vlad.
A project like this can take place without a lot of effort from our client and without disturbing their usual activity:
“The mapping process also happened really fast, without having to interrupt our current members’ activity in the space.”
What role will this technology play for Impact Hub?
“Adopting this solution will facilitate the lead generation process for our private spaces at Floreasca. Digitizing the space gives us a competitive advantage, especially now when some of our potential future clients want to visualize the location virtually.
It is in our philosophy to be the ideal host to our clients, and the fact that we are now able to offer our future members a new digital experience, that enables them to see the space from wherever they are, proves that our community’s safety and comfort always come first.”
How will technology influence coworking and office spaces in the future?
“Today, it is essential to bring as many technological processes in almost any industry”, emphasizes Vlad.
“We are focused on digitizing the activities that improve our members’ experience, but also our team’s activity. Our clients especially appreciate our digital processes related to check-in, onboarding, booking meeting rooms and parking spaces to monthly billing, and these checkpoints bring an added value to their experience at Impact Hub.
Making everything easier to understand already gives us better reviews, and technology brings this advantage of accessibility.”
What will the future of work look like?
Vlad thinks that while many look for an answer to this question, we must take into account the contextual reality we are now living in.
“People, teams need to collaborate and socialize, so I think companies will return to using offices, at different paces. For us, once the vaccination process started, the number of new clients has increased, as well as the frequency at which they use our spaces.
In the long term, the office spaces’ architecture and the processes within an office building will change, and the flexibility given by the cowork space will be put into the spotlight. Through its nature, the coworking model is dynamic, because it has to be permanently adapted to the context and to the reality. As consumers’ habits and behaviours change, so does the way office spaces work.”
Furthermore, coworking spaces will become even more appealing given their new roles, Vlad says:
“We believe that community services offered to clients in a coworking area will be the ones to make the difference. A shared space isn’t valuable just because it efficientizes costs, but because it helps you connect and learn from others and therefore, grow your business. Coworking spaces will become innovation and collaboration spaces for essential corporate teams, but also for professionals and entrepreneurs who need to strengthen their positioning.”
Impact Hub Bucharest in 2021:
Last but not least, we were curious to learn about our newest client’s and longtime host’s plans for this year:
“This year we want to consolidate our two Impact Hub locations – Impact Hub Floreasca and Impact Hub Universitate. At the same time, we are exploring other development opportunities as well, in order to meet some new needs that appeared in the market, given the pandemic, and to offer sustainable alternatives to all those who are involved.
In the long run, there is the potential of growth following the franchise model, but in the short term, the challenge is not that there aren’t enough spaces, but that some clients are still skeptical about returning to office. Also, the role an office plays today has changed.
At the same time, the educational and entrepreneurial support component of our business has worked very well and we will create and integrate new projects and programs in our portfolio. We pay very much attention to new initiatives that address relevant european or global issues, such as programs that prevent and fight climate change, the agri-food sector, the education and health industries. All of these initiatives are based on entrepreneurial innovation and it is our goal to support startups and entrepreneurs at different stages of their businesses by offering them the right growth resources.”
The platform we implemented for Impact Hub Floreasca, in Bucharest, is available here: https://tur-floreasca.impacthub.ro/projects/impacthub
A video demo can be accessed here: https://vimeo.com/538553069
