Are you business owner in need of commercial storage space? If so, you should consider utilizing commercial storage services! These are storage facilities that are designed to elevate your business. With higher security measures, full-service pickup, and logistics services, you can focus on your business while your storage facility cares for you items! Here’s a definitive guide to commercial storage services and why you should use them for your business.
What is Commercial Storage?
At its core, commercial storage is holding services for businesses. If you’re a business owner, you understand how quickly items can pile up. This applies to all kinds of businesses, not just companies that require warehouse facilities. Even companies that work out of an office can benefit from business and commercial storage units.
Whether you need to archive specific paperwork or store away unused inventory items, commercial storage comes with a wide variety of benefits. For one thing, commercial storage has characteristics that differentiate it from self-storage. Commercial storage facilities usually come with higher security, logistics services, and climate control.
Security
Advanced security features are one of the most important and well-known characteristics of commercial storage. While many storage facilities offer some form of security, commercial storage is responsible for a large number of items, with many of them being valuable. Thus, it’s important for the facility to have fully optimized security measures.
Examples of added security measure include video surveillance. If something were to happen, your storage facility should be able to see who was responsible for the event. Your facility should also provide coded access to specific individuals along with a fence. This helps control who comes in and out of the commercial storage facility.
Climate-Control
As simple as climate-controlled storage may seem, it can mean the difference between damaged items and a well-maintained inventory. This can be especially important for certain industries like pharmaceuticals whose items rely on temperature management. Even so, every business can benefit from climate controlled storage.
It can be incredibly convenient to know that your items are safe and away from extreme weather conditions. This can prevent your items from getting moldy, humid, or damaged due to intense temperature extremes. Generally speaking, climate controlled storage facilities keep their temperatures between 55-80 degrees fahrenheit.
More Space
Another distinguishing factor that separates commercial storage from self-storage is the amount of spaces businesses are allowed to utilize. Depending on the amount of products or items you need to store, it’s likely not going to fit the average storage unit. These can also include drive-up units that allow you to access your storage space without having to carry heavy objects.
Plus, if you need assistance with your storage unit, commercial facilities will always have trained professionals ready to help. They can assist you with your unit size and how to design your layout. It’s important to remember that you’ll likely be using your storage unit for a long period of time. Thus, it’s important to have a lot of room to grow into in case you need to add more items.
Commercial Vehicle Storage
Another great amenity provided by many commercial storage facilities is vehicle storage. Being a business owner means owning a lot of automobiles that won’t be used for long periods of time. Unfortunately, these vehicles can take up a lot of important space when they’re not in use. Thankfully, a commercial storage facility can store these vehicles for you. Commercial vehicle storage can hold anything from commercial vans, semi-trucks, or riding mowers.
Office Storage
If you run your business through an office space, it may not seem like you could get much out of commercial storage. On the contrary, commercial storage can be just as helpful for offices, especially if you’ve accumulated a lot of unused items. It can also be helpful if you have a lot of important documents that need to be archived in a safe location.
Commercial storage facilities can help you properly organize your office supplies whether it be furniture, paperwork, or unused appliances. Many of the benefits that come with commercial storage all keep your office supplies maintained and safe. Climate control can protect your important documents and advanced security makes sure all your items are secure.
Why is Climate-Controlled Storage Important?
Simply put, climate-controlled commercial storage is your first line of defense against extreme weather, When you’re storing items like pharceutical equipment, instruments, or paperwork, outdoor elements can significantly damage your business belongings. Climate-controlled storage units tend to be more expensive, but it’s important to remember that the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Climate-controlled storage can offer a wide range of amenities along with temperature management. They may offer humidity control, which can be beneficial for storing office paperwork. Pharmaceutical industries greatly utilize climate-controlled warehouses to safely store their equipment and medical supplies.
Weather Protection
One of the most notable qualities of climate-controlled storage is its ability to protect your business items from extreme weather conditions. This can be especially useful if you live in an area that’s prone to certain kinds of storms of temperature extremes. Climate controlled storage spaces will always stay between a comfortable temperature to maintain your items.
Elements like temperature may not seem like a big deal, but it can still damage important business items. Anything made out of wood like instruments or office furniture can split and crack from constant changes in temperature. The same applies to paper items like books or business records. In other words, weather protection prevents your items from damage.
Decreased Dust Accumulation
Regular storage units often track in a lot of dust and debris, leading to unwanted messes. This can deteriorate your business items and encourage pests like mice to invade your storage space. Thankfully, climate-controlled storage facilities keep all of your belongings clean and free of annoying dust accumulation.
These facilities prevent inconvenient messes by storing items inside insulated and sealed units. These will often include a complete roof, floor, and insulated walls. This prevents dirt from getting inside your storage unit in case of heavy foot traffic. This can also prevent potential weather complications like flooding while keeping mice and rats out of your storage unit.
High Air Quality
Air quality may not be one of the first things you think about when considering climate controlled storage. However, it can be extremely important for certain items like unused office appliances or business documents. Along with regulating temperature, most climate controlled storage units consistently maintain air circulation. This keeps the entire environment clean and prevents delicate items from deteriorating.
Humidity Control
Left unchecked, humidity can wreak havoc on your business items. However, this amenity isn’t always offered by climate-controlled facilities. Thus, when searching for a climate controlled storage space for your business, seriously consider humidity control. This can be essential for items made out of wood.
Humidity control can also prevent milder build-up. Being that humidity accummulates a lot of moisture, it can lead to a lot unpleasant smells or water damage. This can be especially problematic for important business documents, wood furniture, or unused appliances. These storage units usually keep humidity levels at about 55% all year round.
What is Full-Service Storage?
Full-service storage refers to services that completely assist you with business item relocation. In other words, they’ll pick up your items from your storage unit and deliver them to your specific location. This can allow busy business owners to focus on their responsibilities while they handle the relocation of your requested items.
The convenience of full-service storage goes far beyond pick-up and delivery of business items. Full-service storage professionals will pack, carry, and box all your belongings from your storage facility to your requested location. With full-service storage, you don’t even have to leave your area of work. You only need to worry about running your business while they transport your items!
Delivery Services
Unlike self-storage, you won’t need to lift a single finger with full-service storage services. Full-service storage professionals cover everything from packing to transportation of your business belongings. Business owners are busy people, meaning you won’t always have the time to single-handedly relocate your business items.
However, with full-service storage services, you can continue focusing on completing your business tasks while the professionals handle your belongings. As an added bonus, some full-service storage services offer smartphone features that allow you to request your items quickly and efficiently.
Convenience
Moving items is almost always stressful and inconvenient, especially when you’re trying to manage a business at the same time. It takes a lot of extra effort to get other people to help you move your business items. Plus, you need to make sure you have the proper equipment to move your belongings safely.
Full-service storage professionals already have all of these resources to assist you with your business items. If you have office furniture that needs to be relocated, full-service storage professionals will properly pack them up into a truck and transport them to your storage unit. You can always be assured that the professionals will take good care of your business items.
Inventory Tracking
Some full-service storage professionals offer inventory tracking along with their packing and delivery services. This means they’ll keep track of your requested items and make sure everything arrives at your requested location in good condition. This ensures that they’re taking good care of your belongings and delivering all the correct items.
Advancements in technology have allowed inventory tracking to become more convenient than ever. For example, some full-service storage services allow business owners to track their inventory in real time as it’s being packed and transported. You can also use this technology to request your items at your own convenience.
Cost-Effective
It should be mentioned that full-service storage services tend to be more expensive than traditional self-storage. Granted, rates can vary depending on the facility and the types of services they offer. Plus, it’s important to remember that you’ll get what you pay for when it comes to full-service storage services.
Full-service storage is usually more expensive because they pick up and transport your items for you. Plus, these services often require more team members, moving tools, and logistics, adding to the cost. However, if budget’s an issue for your business, there are affordable full-service storage services available.
Why Are Logistics an Essential Part of Commercial Storage?
Logistics are technically a separate part of commercial storage operations, but they’re just as important as the rest of the previously mentioned characteristics. In summary, logistics are the key to getting your products from one location to another. This includes important transactions like packaging, warehousing, and transportation.
Even if you don’t think you need logistics services, there’s a lot of benefits that coincide with commercial storage facilities. While logistics can vary depending on the type of business you run, they can still be incredibly valuable. Aside from the transportation of goods and services, logistics improves business efficiency, inventory management, and customer satisfaction.
Material Sourcing
Material sourcing refers to the process of finding the cheapest supplier for raw materials. However, material sourcing also includes a lot of other responsibilities related to this portion of the supply chain. Material sourcing sometimes involves managing contributing factors and calculating potential costs.
These contributing factors include shipping and warehousing costs along with add-on services expenses. This job requires a professional with a good understanding of these contributing factors and where to find specific materials.
Transportation
Transportation might as well be the bread and butter of logistics. Getting your items from one location to another will be the most important factor in the success of your business. Logistics need to figure out how to move your goods and which carrier will transport them. In addition to these factors, they need to consider budget, distance, and speed.
Warehousing
Logistics play an important role in warehousing, especially when it comes to commercial storage facilities. Logistics managers need to consider warehouse space and whether or not certain items need to be climate controlled. They’ll also be required to ensure that your business items are nearby accessible modes of transport.
Logistics managers will also be in charge of organizing goods in the warehouse. For example, higher-demand goods that require frequent transport needs will be placed at the front of the warehouse. Meanwhile, lower-demand goods will be placed near the back with perishable items varying in location based on age.
Inventory Management
Inventory management is another essential part of logistics. Managers can prepare for higher demands of specific items based on the season and current trends. This benefits business owners by helping them increase their profits and inventory turnover. Logistics managers will also update business owners on lower-demand items so they can offer them at discounted prices.
Supply Chain Management
Logistics is technically one part of the supply chain. Supply chain management is an entirely separate process of distributing business items. Logistics focuses on a single business’s goods and services while supply chain management refers to a network of companies moving their items.
Nevertheless, logistics stills includes supply chain management. It’s an important part of getting your business’s goods from suppliers, manufacturers, sellers, and buyers. You can view logistics as a series of transactions that must take place for a business to thrive. If logistics aren’t properly managed, the entire supply chain fails.
Why is Commercial Storage Great for Pharmaceutical and Biotech Equipment?
Commercial storage services are a must when it comes to pharmaceutical and BioTech equipment. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has strict regulations when it comes to prescription warehousing. Thus, in compliance with the prescription drug marketing act of 1987, all pharmaceutical items must be stored in climate controlled and safe spaces.
Similar regulations apply to biotechnology. Prescription medications and biotechnology are extremely susceptible to external circumstances. Changes as little as temperature could result in harmful effects for people receiving or interacting with these items. Thus, climate control, intense inventory management, and labels are required for pharmaceutical and biotech storage.
What Should You Look for in Commercial Storage Service?
Security Measures
Security is one of the most important details to prioritize when looking for a commercial storage space. A facility without proper security measures is guaranteed to cause issues in the future. Try to go beyond appearance when it comes to security – don’t be afraid to ask a lot of questions! Have there been any break-ins? Has the company been reported for missing items?
Pay attention to the transparency of their responses and figure out if this commercial storage facility has had a history of burglaries. From there, begin observing the facility itself. Be on the lookout for surveillance cameras and find out if each storage unit has secure check-in protocol. During this entire process, keep an eye on the staff’s professionalism to ensure the safety of your business items.
Shelter From Natural Elements
Consider climate-controlled commercial storage, especially if you run a business with particularly delicate items. Feel free to ask questions about their climate-control amenities to see if they offer humidity protection and high air quality. This will keep important business paperwork and wooden furniture safe from extreme weather conditions.
Keep your budget in mind as you compare climate controlled commercial storage facilities. It may be in your best interest to invest in a more expensive storage unit that ensures the safety of your business items. Plus, all of the previously mentioned benefits of commercial storage can help you make the most of your storage space and hold as many items as possible.
Accessibility
When looking for a commercial storage space, it’s important to make sure the area is accessible. This should include drive-up storage units where commercial vehicles can load and unload business items. This can be extremely helpful, even if you don’t visit the storage space often. To coincide with security, pick-ups should only be authorized by approved professionals.
You should also ask the facility about their business hours. Commercial storage facilities don’t always offer 24 hour access to their building. This won’t be an issue if their business hours don’t conflict with your schedule. However, 24 hour access to a storage facility may be an accessibility you want to consider.
Additional Amenities
Before making a final financial decision on a commercial storage facility, consider all of their offered amenities and decide if the price is reasonable for what they offer. Even if they include full-service storage services, little details like extra moving supplies can mean the difference between selecting one commercial storage facility over another.
Some other things to consider should be aisle space and extended warehouse access. This can allow you to store large items and use motorized equipment to access your belongings. Extended or 24 hour access can allow you to access your business items at your convenience. If they appear to offer a wide range of amenities at an affordable price, you should consider using their services.
Boston Commercial Storage
If you’ve been looking for a commercial storage facility that offers full-service pickup and logistics, consider OnDemand Storage! We’re one of the best commercial storage companies in Boston with a team of dedicated professionals ready to help you store your business items. We’ve served several industries including biotechnology, pharmaceutical companies, office buildings, real estate, property management, lawyers, and tech companies. Contact us to learn more about our commercial storage services today!
