I think the biggest part is the fact that you are moving away from brick and mortar services. Brick and mortar means that you need to have a physical office space and put people in that office space. So you’re moving away from the actual costs of that, and it’s quite surprising how those costs escalate if you start bringing all the different building blocks together: it’s the building; the maintenance of the building; electricity; water; carpeting that has to be replaced; the air conditioners; the sanitary processes; security, the tables and chairs, your stationary etc. 

There’s a massive component built around that. So, you start getting the benefit of not having to commit to that and what you typically find in most cases, when it comes to office environments, you sign a three year plus contract.

So now you’re really limiting your exposure as far as that’s concerned. As far as staff accounts are concerned, you become very much an output based environment, if you can, and that’s what you should become. You can manage your staff much more effectively.

If you need 50 hours this week, you get 50 hours. If you need 20 hours by next week, you’ll get 20 hours. So, your staff complement and soft costs can change drastically as well. And even if you don’t get to this modular kind of costing when it comes to staff, at least you can control the cost of those staff as well to a certain degree, because you don’t have to worry about an employee getting to office on time.

You don’t have to worry about an employee whose child is sick and has to take time off, because all of a sudden, they’re in an environment that’s a bit more controlled for them. It is more livable for them. it should change the behavior. If they are sick and are a call center agent, and they can still make a phone call, they don’t have to come into the office and risk infecting their fellow employees.

Certain soft issues are going to add value from a remote type of working environment. But again, you need the maturity of the people to support that type of business mindset.