How WOTSO and Hamlet built a flexible workspace network together, and how the back office got leaner as it grew.
WHO IS WOTSO?
Built for the businesses that don’t fit the mould.
In 2014, WOTSO started with a simple idea: what do you do with vacant office space? The answer turned out to be more interesting than anyone expected.
What began as an innovative approach to empty desks quickly became something much bigger, a network of coworking spaces designed for the businesses that convention has always underserved. Sole traders, startups, small to medium enterprises. People who didn’t want a five-year lease, a receptionist they couldn’t afford, or a blank white office that looked like every other blank white office.
WOTSO disagreed with the idea that small businesses should occupy space on the same terms as multinationals. So they built something different: month-to-month terms, serviced offices for one to a hundred people, coworking desks, meeting rooms, and event spaces, all without lock-in contracts, deposits, or legal fees.
It became known as the WOTSO Way. Flexible, vibrant, full of character. Spaces where businesses skill-share, grow alongside each other, and actually enjoy showing up to work. Today WOTSO is one of Australia’s largest operators of flexible workspace. The humble idea that started with a vacant office has become an ever-expanding network of individuals and businesses building something real, under the same roof.
“Our members don’t fit the traditional mould, so why should we run our business on traditional systems? Everything we’ve built has had to flex the same way our spaces do.”
THE CHALLENGE
A great product. An ops problem that didn’t match it.
As WOTSO grew, so did the complexity behind the scenes. They’d already tried two technology platforms before Hamlet, a custom build from an app company, and an off-the-shelf competitor. Both came up short. So when Hamlet came along in 2018, the team were understandably cautious.
The operational picture at the time looked like this:
- Billing done by hand. Six full-time accountants reconciling thousands of invoices off printed spreadsheets every month.
- Double-booked rooms. The booking setup allowed the same space to sell twice
- Revenue left uncaptured. Selling a meeting room or a day pass required a manual process, so a lot of it simply didn’t happen.
- Data scattered across tools that didn’t talk to each other. Leads, members, and reporting all lived separately.
.
“Six accountants reconciling printed spreadsheets every month, that’s not a sustainable way to run a business this size. We needed something built for operators, not adapted from generic office software.”
THE PARTNERSHIP
Built alongside them. Not handed over and walked away from.
Hamlet was built by people who’ve actually run flexible spaces. That shapes how the partnership works.
Rather than a big-bang switch, the rollout was deliberately hands-on, a few sites first, one at a time, with careful data migration, billing accuracy checks, and one-on-one training with each site’s team before moving on. Once the process was proven, new sites came on in batches of three or four.
Crucially, Hamlet bent to fit WOTSO’s actual business, not just coworking desks, but storage, parking, and health spaces too. And as WOTSO grew toward 40+ locations, the platform grew with them, shaped by a real operator’s needs rather than a generic product roadmap.
That’s been the nature of the relationship since 2018. Not a client and a vendor. Two businesses building something together.
WHAT CHANGED
The back office got leaner. The network got bigger.
The changes that followed weren’t headline-grabbing. They were the kind of operational shifts that don’t make the pitch deck but make an enormous difference to the people who actually run the spaces day to day.
- Billing went from a six-person job to a two-person job. Near-perfect accuracy across thousands of monthly invoices, and the team stopped chasing errors.
- Rooms and passes started selling themselves. Members book and pay through the portal, opening up revenue that used to slip through the cracks.
- One place for member data. Hamlet holds every member record, all in one system, instead of scattered across spreadsheets and disconnected tools.
- A proper CRM for sales. Staff quote, follow up, and close new business directly in Hamlet, rather than juggling a separate sales tool alongside it.
- Decisions backed by real numbers. When the data showed demand for meeting rooms, WOTSO converted quiet offices into bookable spaces and created new revenue immediately.
- Staff actually liked it. Receptionists, space managers, and accountants all found their working day simpler, which is the part that makes a rollout stick.
“Having sales, follow-up, and billing in one place changed how fast we could move. We weren’t waiting on three different tools to agree with each other anymore — we could just see the data and act on it.”
THE NUMBERS
40+
locations, one platform
6 → 2
billing team headcount
7 yrs
and still building
together
WHY IT MATTERS
The thing that stops a space from scaling usually isn’t demand.
WOTSO is a big, complex network. But the lesson holds at any size.
The thing that usually stops a space from scaling isn’t demand, it’s the back office growing faster than the revenue. A separate database here, a CRM there, billing somewhere else, bookings on another platform entirely.
Each new tool adds a new login, a new admin step, a new place for something to fall through the cracks. Hamlet replaces all of it with one system. One place for member data, sales, billing, and bookings, so growth doesn’t mean adding headcount or stitching tools together every time you open a new site.
That’s what Hamlet is built to do. Not to replace the people who make a space feel like a place, but to give them their time back so they can do the human parts better.
“Growth was never the hard part for us — it was making sure the back office didn’t buckle under it. Hamlet meant 40+ locations didn’t need 40+ times the admin.”
