One major challenge for corporate offices and how to solve it

[Updated November 2022]

Is your office facing the same challenge as most corporate offices?

Today’s modern office is designed to clear the path of hurdles for employees. It is smart, it is integrated, and it is connected, but it has one major problem: data.

The problem is not the lack of data. Quite the contrary, the problem is the overload of information that lives in separate places: the segregated data.  

As most businesses have an advanced business intelligence system today, chances are, you are now thinking, “that is not one of our biggest challenges.” However, the data we are talking about is the data you can’t visualize in a dashboard. The data that is increasingly becoming important as the demographics of the workforce shifts and the way we work changes. 

The future of work

There is nothing new about segregated data, so why is this all of a sudden such a big challenge for corporate offices?

Because technology happened.

The smart office revolution began almost 25 years ago, when the use of laptops, mobile phones, and the internet was introduced to enhance productivity. During the 00’s and the 10’s, the technological innovations became more sophisticated. The smartphone and other speedy mobile devices were introduced, leading to the invention of apps, software, and cloud computing. 

As technology continues to advance, the way we work changes. Remote working is on the rise and has been further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, Millennials now dominate the workforce and they expect to be able to use technology for almost every aspect of their lives. This means that today’s office typically consists of a suite of technologies that connect employees, buildings, and existing IT infrastructures: Room booking, desk booking, room availability, desk availability, parking availability, lighting, climate control, etc. And these are just some of the popular IoT integrations of today’s connected office. 

This setup gathers a lot of useful information, but often there is no one place for employees or facility members to see all this information - much less in a visual way. This heavily reduces the value of the data. In fact, it almost makes it useless.

Interactive maps and data visualization

A lot of corporate offices are investing in indoor mapping platforms to visualize their indoor (and outdoor) data. With an interactive dynamic mapping platform like MapsIndoors, you can integrate all important information into a map of your spaces. This provides employees and facility members with all the information they need in one visual experience. 

The benefit of using a map of your spaces to visualize your information is that it adds context that brings more value to your data. If you want to book a meeting room for your next meeting, you have to do it through your calendar or a booking system. While these may provide you with some metadata like the size of the room or the available equipment in the room, they rarely show you exactly where the room is located. 

With MapsIndoors employees can get an easy overview of available rooms and book directly via the map. By clicking on a room they can see all relevant information about that point of interest. The information depends on your integrations, but everything from size and available equipment to temperature, CO2 levels, the number of people in occupied rooms, and more is possible. Of course, they can also get directions from their position to the meeting room including the estimated walking time.

Booking a meeting room is just one example. MapsIndoors allows you to make dynamic integrations with almost any third-party data system. A dynamic integration is a real-time data integration. This means that information is immediately shown on your map so employees always have fresh data to make informed decisions.

If you want to know more about interactive maps and how they can help you build a smarter office, download our free Smart Office guide.