KMC Solutions: Making offices flexible and scalable

KMC Solutions was started in 2010 by Michael McCullough, Greg Kittelson and Amanda Rufino-Carpo — the people behind KMC Mag Group of Companies, which includes KMC Savills, Inc. and Kittelson & Carpo, Inc. — to fill what was then a growing need for serviced offices.

“What we noticed was a lot of our clients needed plug-and-play solutions or a few seats or just a private office space in a larger office, with all the infrastructure,” Mr. Kittelson, now KMC Solutions chairman, told BusinessWorld. He explained that plug-and-play solutions refer to the likes of tables, Internet connection, reception desk — basically the things a business needs to operate.

Those clients were the same clients who sought the services of Savills, a real estate consultancy firm, and Kittelson & Carpo, a business consultancy firm. In an attempt to address their concerns, Mr. Kittelson said they began occupying several floors in some first-class buildings in prime business locations in Metro Manila — Makati City, Bonifacio Global City (BGC) in Taguig City — and eventually in Cebu City, and building office facilities there.

In less than a decade, KMC Solutions has dominated the market. “Now we’ve become the largest flexible workspace provider in the country, and flexible workspace of course covers co-working serviced office and build-to-suit for enterprise clients,” Mr. Kittelson said. KMC Solutions is also one of the largest providers of its kind in the Southeast Asian region.

Currently, KMC Solutions manages over 5,600 workstations, spanning some 32,000 square meters, located on 23 floors in 13 buildings in the top central business districts (CBDs) in Metro Manila and Cebu City. These buildings are Cyber Sigma, Picadilly Star, SM Aura Office Tower, Sun Life Centre, and Uptown Place Tower 2 in BGC; Rufino Pacific Tower and V Corporate Centre in Makati City; Rockwell Business Center, Rockwell Sheridan 1, UnionBank Plaza, Robinsons Cybergate Gamma and Robinsons Zeta Tower in and around Ortigas Center; and Skyrise 4 in a Cebu City information technology park.

An ISO-certified company headquartered in BGC, KMC Solutions caters to a wide array of enterprises — tech start-ups, information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) firms, multinational banks and even the world’s largest unicorns from Silicon Valley. They are normally given the option to choose between a private room or temporary shared office space. The latter, a fairly recent phenomenon, allows employees, regardless of their positions and the departments to which they belong, to build connections and share ideas with each other in a literally and figuratively open work environment.

Those spaces are fully furnished so that firms can occupy them as soon as possible. And the quality of the office is never compromised. Mr. Kittelson said they even use sound-absorbing carpets and lots of glass. Recently, he added, they conducted a redesign of some of their serviced offices to enlarge common areas (lobby, reception, pantry, bar and function area).

Mr. Kittelson noted that their clients are growing a lot faster than they typically do. So are their space needs. “So they need that scalability. They need those larger private rooms with solid Internet connection,” he said. And KMC Solutions is flexible enough to respond to the changing needs of its clients.

“Flexibility means you’re providing your clients constant new room sizes on new floors, and sometimes in new buildings, which allow them to expand with you. Or if they need to downsize, they can as well downsize, offering true flexibility,” Mr. Kittelson explained.

KMC Solutions is now offering other services, like staff augmentation. “We provide virtual teams within our offices for our clients abroad,” Mr. Kittelson said. These clients are normally based in North America, northern Europe, Singapore and Australia. They can directly contact their Philippine staff by phone, e-mail or Skype, and are allowed to implement their own processes and set deliverables. They also have the option to work directly with the staff in a KMC Solutions workspace.

Another is the human resources and payroll management service. KMC Solutions promises to quickly set up the office, together with the human resources services, a client needs. And it offers a comprehensive set of services designed to achieve the following: optimized talent management, reduction of costs, and improved process efficiency.

KMC Solutions will continue to expand, Mr. Kittelson said. “We’re constantly building quality facilities. We’re never not building. We’re expanding thousands of square meters at a time, always,” he said. He added, “I believe you’ll see us expand into second-tier cities throughout the country, and other parts of Metro Manila that are not the traditional CBDs.”