“Oh how nice, so you get to work from home as well?”
How many times have we heard this from clients, colleagues or friends, often intoned with curiosity, sometimes with enthusiasm, and in some cases with… envy?
Indeed, at BMP we’ve been pioneers and confirmed advocates of Smart Working (it does what it says on the tin) since we were founded, and long before this now well known and widespread practice reached the levels of adoption it boasts today. Moreover, since then, modern digital technologies have now made it possible to decouple the traditional physical association between ‘work’ and ‘office’.
From need to opportunity
In all honesty, at the beginning this choice was more or less made for us by the need to contain costs in our startup phase. But in very short order, and thereafter, we found it impossible not to appreciate the growing benefits of this approach.
And time proved us right. Today, more than ever, there is a vast choice of online applications and cloud services that enable uninterrupted and secure access to data and documents from whatever device and location, whilst sophisticated messaging, web, video and teleconferencing tools make it extremely simple to interact directly and share instantly – for example between those of us in BMP working in Rome, Milan or elsewhere. Whilst we seem so far away, we’re actually so closely connected!
So in answer to those who ask, we reply that yes, of course – we work from home as well. Initially, we were rather fearful that this statement might leave the asker a little perplexed, but today we deliver the line with total serenity and even a certain satisfaction, given that it has met with so many positive responses in the past.
Free to be efficient
But we don’t only work from home. This is because we also happen to work rather well from the business centres we use, from our favourite cafe, when travelling, or indeed from our partners’ offices, and any other scenario, in general, in which flexibility and readiness for action are the order of the day. Result: we can guarantee our clients rapid and timely reactivity that beats the norm.
Smart Working is a choice in favour of efficiency, and it has paid dividends – and continues to do so – for both us and our clients. It’s impossible not to emphasise the fact that it enables us to achieve the best possible balance between professional and private spheres, which improves our overall time management, with a clear positive impact on our quality of life and also on our productivity. It makes us freer, in the sense that it liberates us from bureaucratic constraints.
And, not least, it guarantees our clients that their investment is exclusively funding high-quality consultancy, not covering unproductive expenses to pay for office space and full-time secretaries.
Added benefit for us, added value for our clients. Smart.
