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Who’s in the office today? How Workspace Management Software helps you make Practical Plans

HomeResourcesBlogWho’s in the office today? How Workspace Management Software helps you make Practical Plans
Workspace management software

The 20th century model of a workplace just doesn’t get the job done efficiently in the 21st century. Today, work is not a place we go to, it’s an activity we engage in wherever and whenever our customers demand.

Work is now an agile, integrated activity that’s so far from the clock-punching drudgery of last century that the two seem barely related.

Want the truth?

If your office personnel is required to work within a 20th-century mind-set, you most likely have a morale problem — that’s if you can hire the best new talent to begin with.

Did you know: Gartner estimates that the average employee spends 27 hours a year looking for the right space to work.

An adaptive integration of processes and software can bring your workplace up to date and improve user knowledge.

Workplace management software helps employees control and improve their working environment to create collaboration, wellbeing and productivity.

And as a workplace owner or facility manager how you control surrounding conditions can make the environment right or wrong for your business and your employees.

Surrounding conditions can mean two different things:

  • Physical conditions – e.g. what type of space is available for meetings daily, how hot or cold your workplace is, how noisy it is.
  • Equipment – e.g. are collaboration tools such as video conferencing or AV available? What other equipment do your workers need or have available for successful meetings?

So when does all of this go wrong?

  • When your workspace is not set up to support modern ways of working.
  • When workers end up wandering around the building looking for somewhere to sit down and work, or hold a meeting.
  • When your workers are uncomfortable because it’s too hot, too cold or noisy.
  • When meetings fail because no-one shows.
  • When no-one wants to arrange a video conference because it’s too much admin and the equipment isn’t always available when they need it.

So how do you make it right?

Good workspace management software lays all these issues to rest, making your operations more efficient and delivering an effortless agile working environment where people can do their jobs efficiently.

Here’s how using workspace management software to find room works on a daily basis:

Workspace management software such as Rendezvous by NFS provides an app so workers can easily locate and book a desk or room DAILY via their smartphone or other mobile devices.

That’s true even when they are organizing a meeting to involve participants across multiple locations or time zones.

If they need a quiet desk in a cool place, they can specify that when booking the desk – DAILY.

Up-to-date inventory control means they can identify the equipment they need at each location and book that, too – and they can even add catering in the same transaction DAILY.

It can all be dragged and dropped into the familiar Outlook calendar thanks to good integration, and any changes are notified automatically to everyone who is taking part – even the caterers — DAILY.

Is Outlook holding you back? See how to fix it for a perfect meeting experience.

Great room scheduling software works for agile workers travelling from one office location to another and also for office-based staff members who need to find available meeting rooms. Workpace management software allows them to:

  • Easily find and book workspaces/meeting rooms with day-to-day capabilities — it will Inform workers of room availability based on their specifications every day.
  • Create perfect meetings every time since the room scheduling software finds a room, books video conferencing within different time zones, books catering, and notifies participants if meeting times change. It will even release the room when the meeting is finished.
  • Allow collaboration for better innovation and team spirit.
  • Eliminates tiresome manual admin tasks.

What about long term space planning with workspace management software?

DLA Piper is a good example of long-term space planning aided by software.

The global law firm recently moved its Chicago office to River Point, a 52-story office tower on Lake Street. The law firm is leasing 175,000 sq. feet on the ninth through 16th floors in the tower.

With hundreds of employees attending several meetings in 33 rooms in one business day, DLA Piper needed to find meeting management technology to help increase office productivity.

They invested in Rendezvous, integrated with real-time occupancy sensors.

When people enter a room, sensors turn equipment on and instructions appear on the main screen alerting attendees how to project a laptop onto the screen wirelessly or physically plugged in.

Equipment will automatically shut down when the meeting ends. The room is automatically released and its availability displayed on digital panels outside the meeting space for all to view.

The integration of meeting room booking technology with a leading enterprise management system for digital signage and building control created a fully connected workplace for DLA Piper’s new space.

Thanks to the integration of the software and digital signage, workers can find a suitable meeting space, book the room and services and bring remote offices into the meeting by video conferencing, seamlessly.

They can even set up lighting, control temperature and lower window blinds.

Sensors – how do they work?

The system aggregates all the data from the sensor technology – whether that is monitoring desks, meeting rooms or social spaces. Using this data, it is possible to model and predict the future space requirements.

The system sends management an alert when space usage goes above or below user-defined levels. The system provides enough granular data to even suggest how the office should be configured.

For example, using this data to deliver 10% in space savings you can delay future office moves and expansions, or reconfigure the existing space for more flexible working patterns.

One of the great features of the solution is that it can release a space automatically at end of use to the next employee who requires it.

This can increase space utilization by around 30%.

Based on your business rules, space and desks can be automatically re-allocated when you have a “no-show”. For example, a desk can be reallocated if it has been unoccupied for two hours.

Given that the average employee spends 27 hours a year looking for the right space to work, this time saving translates to a major cost saving – creating a win-win scenario for the facility manager.

Want to reduce wasted space and streamline operations?