The Intelligence of IoT has arrived for Workspaces

Not limited to homes and wearable devices, the Internet of Things (IoT) is bigger and has a more profound impact across many industries. Commercial Real Estate (CRE) for example, has extracted tangible benefits from networked IoT devices including improving building occupant comfort efficiently and economically while improving the profitability of the organization.

However, for workspaces, it is more than just another passing trend. The cost of office utilization is rising and is currently the second greatest expense after salary compensations. If operational expense forecasts prove inaccurate, enterprises have to bear revenue target pressures for subsequent quarters. Thankfully, IoT is maturing and delivering business intelligence capabilities faster than many industry experts first imagined. Beyond cost reduction, it is helping organizations implement smarter strategies, create a productive workforce and thus grow profit margins.

As per the IoT in property management research, there are several other driving factors that are pushing the adoption of this technology in workspaces:

• The arrival of 5G means faster and smarter processing that can accommodate high volumes of data streaming in real-time.
• The advancement in cyber-security has increased the trust factor towards IoT. (Remember, workspaces are a host of confidential data.)
• The ripple effect of COVID-19 has called for permanent adjustments to office space interactions and utilization. IoT is just the perfect fit there.

What’s Trending? Ready-to-Deploy Integrated Solutions

As offices gear up for post-pandemic returns, they stand 100% committed to the health, safety, and comfort of employees, staff, and office visitors. That will require immediate implementation of tech solutions including IoT. So, instead of handpicking sensors for standalone requirements, the trends ahead will increase the demand for integrated IoT solutions. This is also a reason behind cubica’s IoT solutions for business, they provide an integrated suite of products and digital monitoring dashboards focussed on uninterrupted connectivity and actionable data insights for businesses of all sizes.

Since workspaces are an important ROI differentiator, IoT can have a significant positive impact. Among many inefficiencies in the real estate industry, consumption of resources is uncertain and organizations don’t have a concrete solution to combat it. As per a report, the desk utilization of an average global office is below 50%. Now imagine the cost overheads it causes and the burden placed on employers and building owners; this leaves a lot of room for IoT-enabled products and services.

In the pursuit of smart, safer and qualitative work environments, organizations are coming up with innovative IoT use cases.

Inventory Management

Offices, no matter how small they are, have continuously moving inventory supplies. Excess, depleting, or deficient inventory levels are common scenes for many businesses. Administrators have to resolve this inconsistency and that’s where IoT helps. The solution is simple – IoT sensors and devices stream real-time updates about the inventory stock. Using predictive analytics, IoT-enabled inventory management systems can help in notifying supply chain and procurement managers in advance.

Energy Management

Other than that, IoT has a vast impact on environmental settings. IoT-based thermostats can automatically monitor the air quality of indoor and outdoor spaces in real-time thereby ensuring the flow of clean air throughout a facility. If required IoT devices can trigger air purifiers as needed. Thermostats adjust the temperatures by themselves depending upon the number of people on the floor or in a given space. Not only does that commit to a seamless employee experience but it also saves significant amounts of energy and energy-related expenses. That’s huge because the cost of implementation is low for many of today’s easy-to-deploy IoT solutions. Through such energy-savings approaches, today’s smart IoT solutions and smart appliances can save up to 15%-30% in energy bills; sometimes even more if more efficient lighting and HVAC systems are upgraded as well.

Hot Desking & Meeting Rooms Optimization

However, the most important use case of IoT in offices comes from workspace optimization. The relatively new trend of hot desking is getting popular and organizations have plenty of reasons and benefits to implementing it. To put it simply, hot-desking is the concept of “renting” out a single desk or several desks instead of the entire floor. A single floor can have multiple hot desks. That means a single floor can have multiple teams, totally unrelated to each other. You guessed that right – Coworking, as it is formally known, offers businesses, buildings owners, employees, and remote workers greater flexibility in how spaces are used.

For tenants, mostly small start-up teams and freelancers this is a great relief. No more hustling in cafes. Hot-desking in coworking spaces is an opportunity for them to pay less and yet work from a formal office. For space service providers, this is a valuable addition to their revenue streams with optimal utilization.

Consider a simplistic use case. Every hot desk has attached sensors that sense human presence. The sensors, then through an IoT network update the status to a cloud dashboard. The data then can be accessed through a smartphone. Now as soon as there’s an inquiry for hot desk availability, the IoT network protocols provide an accurate status update about current slots or others that would be vacant soon.

The data that is collected periodically provides an analytical overview of the daily, weekly, and monthly trends. Not to miss, real-time vacancy status can be displayed on the floor entry so that the user can request accordingly. In this system, from requesting a hot desk to analyzing the consumption, there are no manual resources required on-site. Everything is automated, ensuring transparent and optimal processing.

Finding available meeting rooms for ad-hoc requirements is a hassle and we have all gone through this.

The host-desking use case is not only applicable to coworking spaces. More and more businesses that have large office footprints are starting to implement this use case to provide greater flexibility to their onsite and remote employees who may only come into the physical office a few days a week.

Conclusion

As already discussed, IoT in CRE is a major breakthrough for an industry that had been upended by COVID-19 and the shifting the utility of workspaces. The narrative is changing and it’s high time that building owners, businesses, and commercial real estate firms account for the many benefits that IoT solutions provide. At the end of the day, the Internet of Things is more than just a consumer solution.