Founded in 1989, Essential Offices is a long-established flexible office provider serving professional service firms in Oklahoma City and Edmond. Unlike many coworking operators, Essential Offices supports businesses that regularly meet with their own clients onsite. This makes reliability, professionalism, and operational accuracy critical to success.
Led by founder and president Beth Degraffenreid, the company has navigated decades of change in office technology. As expectations around digital access, automation, and customer experience grew, Essential Offices needed a platform that could support both its long-standing operational discipline and its future growth goals. That platform became Yardi Kube.
“I founded the company in 1989 and we mainly serve professional service companies, and many of them see their clients in our office,” Beth Degraffenreid, President & Founder, Essential Offices said.
The Challenge: Manual Processes and Disconnected Tools
Operating for decades before modern coworking software existed, Essential Offices faced a familiar challenge: manual, fragmented workflows. As technology evolved, Degraffenreid continuously sought ways to automate, but doing so often meant layering multiple point solutions together. These disconnected tools created inefficiencies, increased staff workload, and introduced risk. Processes such as invoicing, member onboarding, and virtual office sales required duplicate data entry across systems, leaving room for errors and delays.
“Everything was manual. So, as technology has progressed, I’ve spent all these years trying to automate as much as possible.” Degraffenreid had firsthand experience managing operations through multiple tools, and the drawbacks were clear.
“You are trying to accomplish your goals and operations by doing pieces of things, then figuring out how to put them all together. It’s difficult, time consuming, and prone to errors,” she explained.
In a smaller market like Oklahoma City, flexibility was also essential. Essential Offices needed to say “yes” to prospects quickly, whether that meant online payments, e-signatures, or mobile access, without sacrificing accuracy or professionalism.
The Solution: One Fully Integrated Platform with Yardi Kube
Rather than continuing to stitch together disconnected systems, Essential Offices chose Yardi Kube to unify its entire operation, from sales and onboarding to billing, access control, and accounting. The appeal was clear: everything in one place.
“Yardi Kube just has everything in one place,” Degraffenreid said. “It’s more efficient for our staff and better for our members.”
With Yardi Kube, Essential Offices digitized the full member journey. Contracts are sent via e-signature, payments are processed online, and members interact with the space through a single app. For Degraffenreid, this created a competitive advantage and raised the bar for the member experience.
“Yes, we can send that contract for e-signature. Yes, you can pay online. Yes, we have an app,” Degraffenreid added. “That gives them an extra level of comfort compared to our competitors.”
Yardi Kube also enabled true e-commerce for virtual offices, something Essential Offices had never been able to offer before.
The Result: Accuracy, Efficiency, and a Better Member Experience
Members interact with Yardi Kube all day, every day, often without realizing it. From mobile access control to meeting room bookings and invoice payments, the platform supports daily operations behind the scenes.
“Our members interact with Yardi all day, every day.” Degraffenreid explained that access controls allow members to enter the space and use meeting rooms after hours, while distributed teams can manage billing and bookings remotely through the member portal. “The staff in the home office can book meeting rooms. Their people can view and pay invoices.”
Error Reduction and Financial Accuracy
Before Yardi Kube, selling virtual office packages involved exporting data from one system and re-entering it into another. This doubled the work and increased the likelihood of mistakes. Yardi Kube eliminated that risk by fully integrating e-commerce, contracts, and accounting.
“When somebody signs up for a virtual office package, it goes immediately into Yardi Kube and creates a member and a contract. Everything is already there, and it’s not fraught with errors.”
Degraffenreid is clear about the impact of integration on accuracy: “Every time you divide a piece of the process, you’re asking for an error.” With Yardi Kube, invoicing, proration, add-on revenue, and payment processing all live in one system. This gives Essential Offices confidence in its financial data and saves significant staff time.
Trust, Scale, and Long-Term Partnership
Perhaps most notably, Beth entrusted Yardi with every part of her business, a decision she did not take lightly.
“Yardi has my entire business in its hands because all the prospects and all the current members touch Yardi all day, every day.” That trust is reinforced by Yardi’s service and support, which Degraffenreid describes as a key differentiator. “The icing on the cake, or the cherry on top of the sundae, is service and support. It’s second to none.”
With multiple support channels and responsive, human assistance, Degraffenreid feels confident knowing that if something goes wrong, it will be resolved quickly and thoroughly. “They don’t disconnect until everything is okay.”
Conclusion: A Platform Built for Growth
Today, Yardi Kube is central to Essential Offices’ operations and its future plans. As the company looks to add new locations, scaling is straightforward.
“That is so easy. That is one phone call and an email to schedule the install.” For Degraffenreid, Yardi Kube isn’t just a coworking platform. It’s the operational backbone of her business. “It is by far the best operations and accounting program that I have run across.”
By replacing fragmented tools with a single, integrated solution, Essential Offices has modernized its operations, improved accuracy, elevated the member experience, and positioned itself for continued growth, all while maintaining the personal, professional service its clients expect.
