This is a CTP of initiative: Impact Hub London King’s Cross (UK)
The CTP revolves around the introduction and use of a new software program called Nexudus. It was introduced at the IH KC in October 2015. Nexudus is a platform to manage serviced offices, co-working spaces and shared workspaces. It provides a central hub where all the members of the space can collaborate, report problems and manage and pay for their accounts.
Nexudus did not only automatize the booking system, but also the way in which the financial transactions are being arranged between the IH KC and its members. Before, using the software, bookings were done manually. “It would mean that we received the money from a booking after two months, if you were lucky in one month“ (Managing director). After the introduction of Nexudus, there was a complete different mechanism: “If you book you pay, which means that if you are not a member, you have to pay in advance. If you are a member, you have to pay the invoice that is send at the end of the month, plus the costs for the memberships for the next month”. Consequently, it changed the complete cash flow of the IH KC. As the managing director indicates, “although we were already in a good financial situation, that was the biggest change”.
The use of Nexudus had an effect on how members used the services of IH KC, as well as on the day-to-day practices of the staff members of IH KC. Because Nexudus was integrated with an existing system controlling the opening of the doors to the workspaces, the IH KC could control when and how long members made use of the space: “We used to have a system, which was only there to open the door. What Nexudus did, by integrating it with the system for opening the doors, members now have to tap in and out, however, if they overuse we now can control this. If you buy 30 hours and if you already have used them, you cannot open the door without coming to the reception” (Managing director).
For the staff members, in particular for the managing director this meant enormous timesaving on financial management: “A lot of my time was focused on financial management. It went from outstanding (payments) of 80k/50k to 20k after the day of receiving automatized payment, to in the end outstanding (payments) of 5k”.
Although the decision to specifically use Nexudus was largely a result of a decision of the new managing director, other actors were involved in the process of finding suitable software, implementing it and finally using it.
At the same time that they were searching for appropriate software, member(s) of the Impact Hub Ottawa (IH O) and the community manager of IH KC had a meeting related to another topic. During this meeting, he/she found out that IH O was using Nexudus and that other Hubs were very interested in applying this software program.
Even before discovering Nexudus, the team of IH KC had already been busy with searching an appropriate software for automatizing their practices. The managing director explains that she “started to look for software for the Hub since the day I started working at the Hub”. Before the managing director made the decision to use Nexudus, she made contact with the developers of the software. One of them is member of the IH Madrid and the managing director had confidence in this program because of the positive conversations: “I met him, liked him and trusted him. That’s why I felt confident about the product and working with him”. The actual introduction had been a coproduction between the IH KC team and the Nexudus team as is outlined on the latter’s website: “During the last few months, we have been working very closely with their team to introduce many new processes and try to improve existing ones. It has been a journey where every party has learned a lot and we feel incredibly proud of how things are turning out” (Nexudus Website).
After implementing the software for daily operations of the IH KC – every member and staff member is in touch with it considering it is already involved in opening the doors. The introduction went stepwise, they first connected some members to the system (April 2015), and with the start of the new financial year in October 2015, they implemented it for everyone. Although they had already felt ‘ready’ for implementation in July, they made a “strategic decision to start fresh from a new financial year” (Managing director).
Numerous related events have had a direct or indirect effect on the evolution of this CTP. Even though the implementation of Nexudus was in October 2015, the search for a new way to automatize the booking system had started already much earlier. The team members and the previous managing director already initiated this process.
However, considering the financial and organisational problems that the IH KC was facing, the board and the managing director both agreed on hiring a new managing director (see CTP HIRING NEW MANAGER) with more experience in resolving these kinds of problems. The new managing director tackled not only these problems but also worked on the overall professionalization of the day-to-day practices of the employees at the hub. This contributed to a positive financial status, which in the end made it possible to prioritize the implementation of Nexudus.
At that point also the global network was busy with developing their own software for the Hubs. The managing director decided that it was not the task of the Hub (network) to develop software and that the options they had in mind were not suitable for the IH KC (see also CONTESTATION).
A crucial event for the implementation of Nexudus is the meeting of the community manager with members of the IH Ottawa. In this completely unrelated meeting, the community manager first heard about Nexudus and informed the new managing director. This initiated the process of considering Nexudus as a suitable option, which in turn was an accelerant for upcoming meetings. Following up on an online meeting with IH Ottawa, the new managing director wanted to make sure that Nexudus could be considered an option. Thus, she arranged a meeting with the developers of this ‘coworking software’.
Another related event was an increase of the rent of the location by almost 100%, shortly after the new managing director was hired. If it was not for that increase in rent, the IH KC would be in a better financial situation and would not have needed additional loans.
The managing director argues that there was not a lot of contestation regarding automatizing the practices in the IH KC. “Of course there was a lot of work, and sometimes people don’t want to work, and people put up a lot of barriers. It is normal of a human being, if you don’t know about it, you are always afraid of things you don’t know. There was resistance. But I think overall we were going to do it and everybody was happy with it, because it made everyone’s life easier”.
Contestation and disagreements were involved in the phase in which the managing director was just assigned to her new job and was confronted with the ideas of the Global Hub Network about which software they were planning to use: “The Hub proposed a software. I was almost going for that thing, and I saw that it wouldn’t work. I was one of the first people saying: ‘This is not going to work, you don’t have the basics you need’. It is useless to us so I am not going for that. As soon as I learned a bit more, and started to do lots of research around it, I realized it’s not going to work.” The contestation between the managing director of IH KC and network shows in the way the managing director reflected on this effort: “If your core business is not creating software, don’t create software. Just look for something that is on the shelf, its always cheaper than creating your own software”.
According to the managing director, in a way Nexudus resolved existing contestations between members and staff: “It saved a lot of horrible conversations based on feelings with members. ‘I think that member is overusing, but I don’t have a way of proving it’. Now you don’t have these awkward conversations, so you can actually have conversations about people’s lives and their projects”.
Because the team had been searching the appropriate software for automatizing the day-to-day practices for a while, eventually finding an appropriate software was anticipated.
Due to all the problems the Hub was facing regarding its daily practices and the uselessness of the software that was in place, it took a while before the team could focus on searching an appropriate software. “Before I came, it took very long. But there were other priorities at that time. The rent increased and we had the business rate issues” (Managing director). However, finding the software was something longed for. According to the managing director: “It was something the team was desperate for a long time. We had 300 systems running at the same time. We were losing money and we know we lost a lot of money, If you see our revenue for meeting rooms, now is very consistent around a figure, and before it was very low, then very high, and very crazy. So it was something the team was desperate for”.
Looking back on this CTP, the managing director got “reaffirm[ed] the things I learned from past experiences”. Thus instead of a process in which she learned new things, she felt strengthened in earlier learnings. She outlines one of these as follows: “If you’re core business is not creating software, don’t create software. Just look for something that is on the shelf. And it is cheaper, always cheaper, than to create your own system. It is something I’ve been telling across the whole network. (…) We are not good at it; so don’t do that”.
Despite the latter, there was one thing that the managing director did mention regarding the things she has learned from this CTP: “If I knew how much easier it [the software] made our life, I would have done it as one of the first things. I don’t know if the system [Nexudus] would be there [already], but I think knowing how much better the systems is and how much easier it makes everything, I would prioritize it as the main thing”.
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