TRAFO Hub: Running a Government-Supported Coworking Space With a Team of Seven
TRAFO Hub is a government-supported coworking space and event venue in Braunschweig, Germany, built inside a historic industrial factory and run by a seven-person team using Cobot to manage memberships, bookings, and billing without the admin overhead.
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Favorite Cobot Features:
The Story Behind TRAFO Hub
Established by Johanna and Henrik Heß in October 2018, TRAFO Hub was born from the industrial bones of a historic factory in Braunschweig. Exposed brick, high ceilings, and modern furnishings create a space that feels unlike most coworking environments. It's a space where the history of a building adds atmosphere rather than age, and where the community is as much a feature as the space itself.
As an officially recognized digital hub and active part of Braunschweig's startup ecosystem, TRAFO Hub was built with a clear mission: to foster digital transformation and bring together the people driving it. Creatives, innovators, and ambitious minds find their place here, alongside students, freelancers, startups, small businesses, and corporates. Together, they share a space designed to spark collaboration and growth.
Beyond daily coworking, TRAFO Hub serves as a fully equipped event venue for corporate events, panel discussions, workshops, and networking gatherings that draw in the wider business and startup ecosystem. People come here to work, but also to connect. Those connections often carry on beyond the space.
Managing a Government Coworking Space: Operational Challenges
As TRAFO Hub grew, so did the complexity of running the space.
Managing memberships, handling invoicing, and coordinating bookings for conference and workshop rooms became increasingly time-consuming. What once worked manually started to slow things down and create friction in daily operations.
For a seven-person team running a busy space, that kind of administrative overhead adds up fast, and it takes energy away from community building, which is where TRAFO Hub truly shines.
"Cobot is the perfect one-size-fits-all solution, and it's highly customizable, so it suits all our individual requirements."
How TRAFO Hub Uses Cobot to Run a Government Coworking Space
TRAFO Hub turned to Cobot to bring everything into one place. They needed a coworking management platform that could handle the full range of their operations without adding complexity. Cobot delivered exactly that.
Visitor and Member Management, including Automated Invoicing and Payments, became reliable and hands-off. Bookings for conference and workshop rooms moved into a single, streamlined Bookings and Calendar. And with Cobot's Analytics and Reporting tools, the team gained clear visibility into how their space was performing, helping them identify opportunities for improvement and growth.
By centralizing membership management, billing, and room bookings, the team simplified their workflows, freeing up an estimated 10 hours per week for the community.
🇩🇪 For a space operating in Germany, it also helps that Cobot is fully available in German (as we are a German company), removing any language barrier for local members signing up or managing their own accounts.
Results with Cobot:
- Membership management, invoicing, and room bookings centralized in one platform
- Clear analytics on space usage supporting growth decisions
- ~10 hours saved per week on admin (estimated by team)
Advice for Other Spaces Considering Cobot
"Less is more. As you get started, you'll see how straightforward everything is, and yet Cobot still does all the heavy lifting. Start with what your space actually needs, keep it focused, and your team will get up to speed quickly with very little explanation required. Then expand and customize as you grow."
