With thousands of layoffs over the past year, a surge of small businesses and start-ups are turning to the executive suite industry to keep overheads low as they ramp up their operations.

Countless individuals have left the corporate world permanently to become their own bosses and are seeking professional yet affordable office space. Instead of setting up shop at the kitchen table, more small business owners are looking in increasing numbers toward companies like YourOffice USA, which facilitate growth with adaptable business centers featuring the technological sophistication that today’s ‘information age’ workforce requires. The demand for remote workplaces from both new start-ups and home-based businesses has been so high in Orlando that YourOffice USA just opened our second location in Lake Mary on September 1 and a third area location will open in Lake Nona in early 2010. This trend isn’t just present in Florida, either: In Charlotte, our franchisee Dave Taylor says his clients are now 70 percent small business and 30 percent corporate - the exact opposite of his center’s client breakdown at the same time last year.

Besides new entrepreneurs, the home-based worker is also benefiting from serviced office centers because they often need alternative facilities for meetings and managing special projects. Even with free Wi-Fi, local coffee shops and restaurants aren’t always an ideal locale when getting out of the house is necessary: You can’t have a confidential meeting or stage an impressive presentation at a small table with uncomfortable chairs and the sounds of clanging pots and crying children in the background. Serviced office centers become attractive for support in areas such as telephone answering, meeting space, work and production areas, and administrative and concierge services as well as their “as you need it, when you need it” availability.

As the American workforce becomes more and more distributed - the Work Design Collaborative estimates that by 2012, 40 percent of the American workforce will work outside the traditional office environment - one may wonder why businesses don’t just respond to the need for quality, reliable, productive remote work spaces themselves. The key reasons they don’t are cost, speed and flexibility. Serviced office centers are simply a better economic alternative, which is why the industry is expanding at its current rate. The attraction for clients, however, goes far beyond just saving money: A conventional office environment takes time to put together, requires long-term commitments and rarely has the flexibility to quickly respond to market changes and evolving business needs. Office centers have assembled all of the tools a company or worker needs, bringing those resources together in a long-term facility arrangement ready to be distributed to the individual customers in bite-sized increments, as needed. Those resources include a high image location, reception, call answering, customer greeting, fully-equipped and supported conference and meeting rooms, full technology packages, furnishings and beverage and food service capabilities all ready for occupancy and supported by maintenance, janitorial services, insurance, and other overhead elements.

Adaptable business centers are high-powered environments ready to gear up with facilities, staffing and services when customers need it-and to go away, taking the associated costs with them, when not needed. Rather than a traditional fixed overhead, clients enjoy a variable overhead that’s connected to their productivity. Their overhead is truly aligned with their operation whether it’s in an expansion or contraction mode.

Outsourcing real estate, facilities management, support services and personnel makes more sense today than ever and will continue to be an important part of our business culture, both in the United States and around the world. It is so important for local business owners to take a good look at the options out there and choose what is best for their business and what will ultimately help them grow.

Article by J. Scott Rae Buono

J. Scott Rae Buono is president and CEO of YourOffice USA, a national franchisor of high quality serviced office centers and workplaces. Call 800-400-5139 or visit www.youroffice.com.