Business leaders often rely on corporate environment firms to customize their interiors and exteriors to capture the company culture. Establishing the right feeling in your environment strengthens your brand and can be quite motivating to staff. As a true partner with interior designers, architects, and construction companies, an excellent corporate environment firm can take the initial design concepts and develop creative ways to execute them while making all parties look polished. So how do you determine which corporate environment firm to select? In this post, we’ll share five considerations when choosing a corporate environment firm and how these points can benefit your organization.
Reliability & Trust
Investing in how your organization looks is a critical element of your brand. Don’t leave that to just anyone. Choosing a corporate environment firm that you can trust is vital through every step of the journey. When evaluating the reliability and trust factor, ensure that the corporate environment firm has a solid understanding of the scope and design of the project. Otherwise, change orders will be necessary, causing undue frustration for the extended team and the client.
Will the firm provide references that you can call, or will it share testimonials from past projects? Does the company’s portfolio include similar types of jobs and are they of comparable size? If the corporate environment firm has only worked on smaller efforts, there could be issues with them scaling up on larger jobs, which in turn impacts your ability to deliver on time and within budget. These considerations are essential in evaluating the reliability of a corporate environment firm.
Quality
There are many ways to address quality. For instance, the drawings may call for 15 items, but the floorplans may list a different quantity. Also, the plans may be missing one of the many necessary code signs, and the client doesn’t notice it. An excellent corporate interior firm focusing on quality would spot these aspects and bring them to the partners’ attention to address with the end client. This attention to detail can turn a project around and ensure everyone involved has a good experience.
Price
We often hear: “How much is this design going to cost, and how fast can we get it?” Of course, sometimes you can achieve expedited delivery, but it comes with additional costs. Establishing a realistic timeframe upfront is crucial for sticking to the quoted price. You and your corporate environment firm should consider the end client’s needs, as well as things such as supply chain shortages and the manpower needed to complete the installation. Materials that are in demand with low availability can result in higher expenses. However, knowing about comparable alternative materials brings flexibility to the job and can keep the lid on costs. Allocating additional team members to install a job means higher costs. All these aspects are well managed when you choose the right corporate interiors firm.
No matter the size of the project, everyone is budget conscious. It’s not only important to stay within budget, but Innovative Environments also looks for ways to trim the budget proactively and presents those opportunities to our partners. “We prove our worth through value engineering,” Isaac Lupovitch, Director of Corporate Interiors, said. “We can make minimal design changes to save the end client money.”
Creativity
A creative approach allows for the unveiling of a truly customized solution. Again, look at the portfolio of the corporate environment firm you are considering for your project. Do any of the designs inspire you? Are there aspects that you could adapt to your particular project? Look for synergies when it comes to creativity.
Creativity also plays into how a firm tackles a project. While there’s merit in standardized processes, a firm that can introduce fresh ideas and innovative ways to address challenges helps the project succeed. When evaluating your partners, ask them to share at least one way when they applied a creative approach to a past job and why that was advantageous to the partnership and the client. Their response will let you know if your teams will work well together and if their creative instincts are on track with yours.
Experience
Sometimes a corporate environment firm with less experience seems to cost less, but be cautious when deliberating this route. Does this organization have the breadth of expertise to handle every aspect of your project? How many questions were you asked during discovery? Did your corporate interiors firm understand the requirements so keenly that you learned more about your project due to discovery? A firm with a proven track record can lend its expertise to cost savings, alternatives, and overall improvements to design. For example, Innovative Environments submits material colors for review and approval. This process check keeps everyone informed and helps prevent the need to re-order materials further into the project if the client isn’t pleased with the color selections. Our substantial experience as an environmental graphics fabricator allows us to bring best practices to every job.
Whether you are a commercial interior designer, an architect, or a construction company, we encourage you to add these top considerations to your checklist when choosing a corporate environment firm. We’d love the opportunity to learn about your upcoming projects and how Innovative Environments can partner with you to make your projects shine. Learn more about Innovative Environments and contact us to engage on your next installation. As our tagline states, we are “Turning Heads and Inspiring Curiosity.”