Don't buy it, share it
Is your business making the most of the sharing economy?
By Sylvia Pennington
Updated August 31, 2015 — 12.33pm first published at 10.22am
Booking a holiday apartment through Airbnb, using a smartphone to order an Uber ride instead of hailing a cab . . . thousands of Aussies have become sharing economy converts in their personal lives.
A slew of small and medium enterprises are fast following suit, lured by the combination of convenience and cost savings offered by digital platforms which marry idle assets with unmet needs.
Magda Walczak from The Search Party is a big fan of Airbnb.
Property and immigration firm Ausin Group is among those groups.
The company recently hired a couple of car parks from Divvy, after being unable to secure additional Sydney CBD spaces for its sales and property management team from the firm's main supplier, Wilson Parking.
Divvy is an online broker for vacant car parks in office buildings, apartment blocks and smaller car parks.
Natalie Stathis​, the executive assistant to Ausin managing director Joseph Zaja, says there's a lot to like about the deals she's done: monthly payments, no contracts and prices around half the $800 to $900 a month charged by Wilson for comparable parks.
Exploring Airbnb as a hotel alternative for staff on extended trips and switching from taxi services to Uber are next on her to-do list, Stathis says.
It's a similar story at packaging vendor Propac, where director Kim McFadden says she has secured a 50 per cent saving by renting a temporary company car from DriveMyCar, rather than a traditional hire firm, for a new staff member on probation.
The platform allows individuals and businesses to hire privately owned vehicles from seven days to 12 months. Prices start from $21 a day and include comprehensive insurance and roadside assistance.
"I was looking at traditional hire cars but was blown away by the cost," McFadden says. "It was 50 per cent dearer without the flexibility."
After searching the internet for alternatives, she rented a Toyota Camry from an inner-Sydney car owner via DriveMyCar.
"It was a couple of years old but clearly had been really well maintained . . . A reliable car that had been well looked after," McFadden says.
She welcomes the straightforward booking process and that there have been no issues over extending the initial three-month hire period by a further month and two days.
Flexibility coupled with significant savings will mean she will return to the site the next time that the company needs temporary transport.
"Any business, you're always thinking of things like that," McFadden says. "It's the needless extra expenditure you want to watch."
PwC partner John Riccio​ says while it's consumers who have boosted the sharing economy – Airbnb offers more rooms than global hotel chains and promising apps are inevitably described as "the Uber" of their category – SMEs have become equally enamoured with the quality, variety and lower costs these platforms can offer.
Large firms often have purchasing policies and preferred supplier deals but this tends to be less of an issue for staff in SMEs who want to experiment with new services.
Typically, they swap traditional suppliers for sharing economy start-ups after a push from an employee who's tested it at home and become a fan, Riccio says.
At Sydney recruitment start-up The Search Party, chief marketing officer Magda Walczak's enthusiasm for Airbnb has resulted in her selling her colleagues on using the platform for work trips.
"It's not company policy but it's becoming a recommendation," Walczak says.
"When I travel personally, I like the flexibility of having my own space . .. it's nicer. I've done it for personal travel quite a bit, so I started doing it for work travel."
Based in Chicago, she's often on the move and has clocked up big savings for the firm.
Try $60 a night for a Toronto apartment, versus $220 for a hotel; and $120 for a one-bedroom apartment in Sydney's Surry Hills rather than $250 for a hotel of comparable quality, plus a taxi fare to the office, Walczak says.
Other staffers have followed her lead, including The Search Party's chief executive, Ben Hutt, who's booked accommodation for an upcoming trip to London and Toronto through Airbnb.
"Small businesses and start-ups, you have to save money," Walczak says. "If you're growing, one way to do that is to be fiscally responsible."