Move management, for companies that have stopped moving people one at a time.
Your relocation programme is run end to end for HR and finance: policy, budget, coordination and reporting. We have relocated 5,000+ employees for our corporate clients.
Move management is not a bigger move. It is who owns the decisions between moves.
A moving company is hired for one move. It packs, ships and leaves. The next transfer starts the conversation again, because nothing was written down.
Move management is the part that carries forward:
- a policy that answers "does this include storage?" the same way in March and in November
- a budget forecast before the year starts
- one coordinator per move, accountable for it
We move from India, the UAE and Singapore to 150+ countries. Work at the destination is handled by our own in-house coordinators, working with a vetted agent network and local destination partners.
What the fee covers
What is in the fee, and what is billed separately.
The fee is charged per move or as an annual retainer, depending on volume. Third-party costs are passed through and itemised.
In the management fee
- Programme design, and the policy written or audited
- A named coordinator on every move, from approval to the unpack
- An account manager above them, accountable for the programme
- Approval workflow and exception handling against your policy
- Supplier selection, briefing and quality management at both ends
- Cost tracking per move, reported on your cycle
- Forecasting built from your headcount plan
- All-risk marine cover at declared replacement value, included as standard
- A post-move review, fed back into the policy
Billed separately, named here rather than later
Passed through, not absorbed into the fee.
- The moves themselves: packing, freight, storage and delivery
- Duties and taxes, which are a customs authority's to set
- Immigration and visa work, done by regulated advisers
- Temporary accommodation, housing agency and school placement fees
- Tax advice, which belongs with your own advisers
- Anything your policy places outside the programme
The fee follows your volume, your destinations and whether a policy already exists.
How it starts
Five stages turn a first conversation into a running programme.
The first two stages build the programme. The last three are the programme running.
Discovery
This looks at last year's moves: how many, where, what each cost and what went wrong. An existing policy is read against that history. The gap is where your exceptions come from.
Policy and setup
The policy is written or rewritten, and the tiers are set. The approval workflow is agreed with the budget holder. Reporting is designed alongside, because finance's questions decide what each move records.
Move initiation
A move is approved against the policy, and a coordinator is assigned by name. They book the survey, agree the dates and brief the destination team. The employee has one person to call.
Execution
Packing, freight, customs and destination services are tracked against the plan, not reported after it. Exceptions go through the workflow you approved, not settled on the day.
Review
Every move closes with a review and a reconciled cost. Once a year, the policy is revised against them.
What decides the fee
Why two companies moving the same number of people are quoted differently.
There is no price list. Know what a proposal is built from before you compare two.
- 01
Whether a policy exists, and survives
Writing one from nothing, auditing one you have and fixing one your recent moves contradict are three different jobs. - 02
Volume, and how evenly it arrives
The same number of moves, spread across the year or landing in one quarter, makes two different programmes. - 03
How many destinations, and how unfamiliar
Each new destination means suppliers to vet, rules to establish and a partner to brief. - 04
How much experience is covered
Shipping goods and settling a family are different scopes. School search, housing and spouse support cost more, and they lose fewer people. - 05
What reporting you produce
A monthly spend summary and an audit-ready record for a listed parent are different deliverables.
Where programmes run from
Where a programme starts, and where your people go.
A programme is administered from where your people are leaving, because that is where the survey, the approval and the paperwork happen. Which of the three you sit in changes the shipping and the customs work, not the policy or the reporting.
Routes from India
And some of the routes they take.
A programme is not limited to these four. Each route page names the paperwork asked for at both ends.
Reviews
What IMove customers say about their moves.
We shifted from Bangalore to Auckland and our complete move was handled by Venissa from IMove Global Mobility LLP.There was a vessel delay due to port congestion in Hong Kong, but the team communicated well and managed everything smoothly. Still very happy with the service. Highly recommend their service for international relocation. Thank you Vanessia and I Move
Kumail Abbas Jung Mir · Household move · Bangalore → Auckland
Special mention of appreciation to Venissa for handling our shipment door to door from Bangalore to Chicago. Her crew had packed all the items very well and marked each item for identifying as it was a shared container. All the items were intact and without damage or scratch especially the Marble dinning tables, chairs, Diwan and the console. Venissa was tracking the shipment from port to port an updating us every step of the way. Her counterpart team in New Jersey also did a very good job of unloading, opening crates and assembling the furniture. Also they removed all the debris from our site. Overall we were very impressed with the service the Venissa - IMove had provided and will definitely recommend them to our friends and also to people who wish transport items from India. Well done IMove. Once again special thanks to Venissa.
Harish Manjunath · Household move · Bangalore → Chicago
I recently moved from Australia to India and IMOVE handled Indian customs and the experience was seamless. They delivered my shipment within the promised timeframe, and the process was straightforward from start to finish. Riju kept us informed every step of the way, providing regular updates, assisting with the paperwork, and ensuring everything went smoothly. Their professionalism and excellent communication made the move incredibly easy and stress-free. I highly recommend their services to anyone looking for reliable relocation services.
Anushree Chacko · Household move · Australia → India
Questions
What procurement asks before anyone signs.
How is move management priced?
It is priced in one of two shapes, and which one fits depends on volume rather than budget, because a management fee per move suits a programme whose moves are few or irregular, while an annual retainer suits steady volume and holds coordination ready whether or not this month has a move.
We do not publish a figure. How many people move, where they go and whether a policy exists change it most.
Can you write our relocation policy from scratch?
Yes, and it is usually the most valuable part of a setup, because the policy is written with your HR and legal teams and settles entitlements by tier, what is discretionary, who may approve an exception and on what grounds, and what your destination countries require of an employer.
An existing policy is audited against what your moves really cost. Exceptions tend to cluster in the same few places: temporary accommodation, shipping volume and whether a car moves.
What reporting do we get, and how often?
You get cost per move, rolled up per programme, on whatever cycle your finance calendar runs, with each move carrying its own reconciled record of quoted, committed and actual cost, and the programme view adding supplier performance and what the post-move reviews found.
Forecasting works from your headcount plan. It is designed at setup, because a field added later leaves the first year unable to answer the question.
Is our employees' property insured while it is in transit?
Insurance is all-risk marine cover at declared replacement value, included as standard, and the values it covers are established at the survey rather than guessed afterwards, which is the difference between a claim that settles and an argument about what an old sofa was worth on the day it was packed.
It does not stretch to anything your policy places outside the programme. Nor does it stretch to items not declared at the survey.
Do you handle visas and immigration?
No, and you should be wary of any moving company that says it handles them, because immigration advice is regulated work in most of the countries your people are moving to, and getting it wrong costs an employee their start date.
The move is coordinated around the visa work instead. Where you have a provider, the move follows their timeline. Where you do not, one is introduced, and the relationship is yours.
What happens when something goes wrong on a move?
It goes to the coordinator whose name is on that move, and if it is not resolved there it goes to the account manager who owns the programme, both of them people rather than queues and both named at setup rather than found halfway through an escalation.
Over the last five years, we have delivered 99.5% of moves on time. A late move is escalated the same way.
Tell us how many people you moved last year.
That number, and where they went, is enough to start. A coordinator comes back within 2 hours.
A proposal follows discovery. It is never built from a headcount described over the phone. We are GDPR-compliant, with formal documentation available on request.