200805051178 | Virtual Offices introduced in Uganda.

Virtual Offices introduced in Uganda.

TRANSNET Uganda Limited, a newly-established company, has introduced an initiative that allows its customers to hire an office space for a period of their choice. Also known as workplace solutions, the offices will be fully-furnished and staffed with personnel to give support functions or products like secretarial services. They will also be serviced by wireless internet offered to the clients freely. Separated by collapsible partitions, the offices can also be instantly turned into conference facilities.

Dubbed ‘Virtual Offices (VO) concept, the innovation helps individuals and companies to reduce costs and rid themselves the burden of looking for office to rent and furnish.
“What Transnet has done is to enable a client ‘own’ an office for a period of one’s choice,” Nakitto Musoke, the projects coordinator, explained at their main offices at NSSF House on Jinja Road last week.

“You can elect to “own” the office for 30 minutes, an hour, a month or a year,” Musoke added.
With flexible terms, Musoke said, the offices are intended to fit into an individual’s time and needs.

“When a client ‘owns’ a VO, he enjoys free secretarial services, fax, document mail and telephone handling. “A client is allocated a telephone number that can be given to whoever he wishes,” she added. Transnet also manages an internet restaurant.
“This means that clients do not have to move to look for meals,” Musoke said in an interview.

The company’s adjoining cyber café and the business-centre are net-worked to service the VOs.
The internet café facilities include camera- mounted comps with headphones, DVD and CD burning, and online-driven movies.

“All the facilities associated with class and pomp are what one notices as soon as you enter the internet café.

“This is a demonstration of a novelty that must be a result of hard thinking that engaged the owners in an effort to meet and satisfy the needs and expectations of their clientele,” Musoke asserted.
She disclosed that a customer who ‘owns’ a VO in the exclusive wing is entitled to a free mug of coffee or tea.

Musoke said the company plans to introduce other products in the medium term such as data organisation for under and post-graduate students undertaking research programmes, information archiving and event repository and teleconferencing.
Other future plans include video conferencing, corporate workstations and mobile work offices.