Interview with Riccardo Suardi, CEO of Nibol
March 9, 2022
Interview with Riccardo Suardi, CEO of Nibol, desk booking system for the optimization and management of company spaces.
Nibol is the first software entirely dedicated to the booking of desks and workstations inside the office space. The goal of the platform is to help create smarter office management in order to make working life easier and more calm.
What’s possible with Nibol
Starting to use Nibol is very simple, you just need to register, choose the plan closest to your needs, load the map of your office and you’re done.
Once your “virtual office” is created, users can:
- book desks with two simple clicks
- book a meeting room
- book your own parking
- receive the parcels directly to your station
Through the software you can also manage visitor access and book on-demand external spaces for your meetings or for any other need, thus multiplying your “physical” office
Nibol is dedicated to companies that want to optimize their spaces in a smart way, to Freelancers looking for work spaces, to businesses with multiple locations that want to manage everything from a single centralized place.
The tariff plans are different depending on the type of user, the subscription to the platform guarantees 14 days of free trial without the need to insert a credit card.
If you want to know more about the platform, read the interview with Riccardo Suardi, CEO of Nibol
Hi Riccardo, nice to meet you and thank you for the time you are giving to us. Nibol: tell us more about this software
Nibol is a tool that allows workers to book a workstation in the office or out of the bureau, and at the same time enables companies to manage and optimize office spaces: desks, parking lots, meeting rooms, visitors and personal packages. It is a product entirely intended, designed and developed in Italy and today is used by major international companies. The real strength of our software is that it offers a lot of possibilities when setting up, but at the same time an extreme ease of use. On average, a company with 250 employees takes 2 to 4 hours to set everything up. With a few hours of setup, Nibol manages to bring to 0 the time that an HR /office manager usually has to devote to managing office spaces. A great economic value for the company and a great time saving for the workers.
How and when did you get the idea of Nibol?
Nibol was officially born in 2019, but I had started thinking about it some time before. During my second year of university abroad, I was working as a freelance designer and looking for different spaces from home where I could work. So I went to the cafeterias that offered a Wi-Fi connection and spent several hours there so I could focus on my projects. Back in Italy, I had difficulty finding this type of space, so independently I started to save on Google Maps the best places to work, with all their services.
Other friends also started to ask me the link to this map and so I realized that it was not only my need, but also that of other people. I realized that I could create something more than just a small personal project. The turning point was at the end of 2020. We realized that improving the way people work in the world was not only a need for freelancers, but also for employees, who, thanks to the new normality, have changed their habits.
Today, in fact, you no longer go every day to the office, you no longer have your own desk and you can work anywhere. For all of this, now Nibol has a solution.
How did you launch Nibol? Did you use crowdfunding campaigns?
No, we have never used crowdfunding campaigns. At the beginning it just takes a lot of passion and desire to do. Sometimes with a group of friends and an idea you can make very hard projects possible.
Why is it so important to optimize the business space, what are the advantages?
There are many advantages and, most important, it is useful for both: companies and workers. On the one hand, companies have the possibility to reduce the costs related to the use of space. In fact, to date one of the most impacting costs for a company is the rent. Thanks to our software, the employer is able to understand the actual number of workstations needed for his company.
On the other hand, workers need more flexibility and they need an easy and immediate tool in order to be able to return to the office, see which other colleagues will be present and be able to better organize the week. Hybrid (or flexible) work is now the new normal and Nibol is the right tool for this.
Nibol: some curiosity about the choice of this name?
The name Nibol comes from the English word “nimble” . From the beginning our idea was to make the world of work agile, as a matter of fact, allowing everyone to work wherever they are. The best thing about all this is that even if the service has changed and improved so much over time, the name is absolutely current for what we are doing now and what we will do in the future. I believe it is a strong sign of a clear and defined vision from the beginning, linked to the motivation for which we are doing this more than the product or service we offer.
New developments supposedly on the horizon?
For the future we have great news. The first will be to bring Nibol to Europe and provide our service to all the best realities that are linked to this new mode of work.
To do this we will continue to work to improve our service more and more in particular on the technological side with our development and internal design team.
In addition, we will release before the end of the year a new module that will give employees the opportunity to book co-working spaces directly within the Nibol app (obviously the company can enable or disable this possibility) which allows to work in places that are most convenient for them, without having to spend time traveling to reach the company headquarters: this way of working is now something that no longer exists.
Curiosity: do you also use Nibol to manage your office?
Absolutely. Every team member can come to the office whenever they want, booking a desk directly from the app. Or you can easily work from home in case you don’t live in Milan or you prefer to optimize your travels and personal activities.
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