There are no better tools to use for office management and space planning than an integrated workplace management software (IWMS). Measuring how office resources are used can help companies reduce office space, change current layouts and increase employee experience and retention. However, using analytics for space management requires knowledge about what type of data that can be extracted, and what conclusions that can be drawn from it. In this blog post, we will present the key metrics, the hardware needed to produce that data and some example cases of how an IWMS system can be used for space management.
There are usually three types of data that can be used to measure office space with IWMS.
IWMS booking data
Integrated Workplace Management solutions often include some form of resource booking capabiltiy. Booking data refers to the statistics that can be extracted from the bookings of your office resources. One thing that you will probably want to do when measuring office usage is to see how often resources are booked. This data is easy to obtain if you already have a IWMS booking system installed at your office. From the booking data, you can find out some key insights.
- How often your resources are booked.
- Which resources are the most popular (based on number of bookings, percentage of bookings, time per booking)
- When resources are booked the most (periods, day of week, time)
- In what areas resources are booked the most.
Read about Desk Booking and Room Booking.
IWMS usage data using sensors
Presence data is an important complement to Booking data within space management and IWMS. Without presence data there are some important metrics that will be unavailable. For example, resources can be booked but never used. To create optimal space usage, we need to know how often booked resources are actually used, and how often resources are used without being booked. If you have desks and rooms that are non-bookable in your office, presence data will be the only way to understand the utilization.
To start measuring presence data, you need presence sensors for rooms and desks. You can read more about sensors here. When adding presence sensors to your IWMS, you will be able to measure:
- Actual usage (no. of minutes a resource is used, percentage of day/week)
- Percentual usage compared to full capacity.
- Bookings vs. usage rates – number of minutes booked vs. number of minutes used.
- How many resources that are booked but not used (count, percentage, etc).
Descriptive data within IWMS
When using an Integrated workplace management system, descriptive data can be used to understand office usage based on certain characteristics. Descriptive data is important to understand the complete picture of how office resources can be optimized. Some examples of descriptive data can be:
- Location of the resource (Building, Floor, zone)
- Equipment present (Ergonomic desk, phone, Screen, etc)
- Time and date
- Opening hours for office
- Resource Name
Combining the Data
All information needed to optimize your office space when using IWMS can be obtained by combining these data sources. Some examples of questions you can have answered include:
- Are you reaching a specific utilization goal? Select a goal and measure booking data to see if the goal is achieved.
- Why are we/are we not reaching our utilization goal? Check why office resources are booked the way they are by using presence data and the descriptive data to investigate.
- What areas should we reduce? Look at the booking and presence data and decide what office resources that can be reduced. Look at the percentage of usage for either complete buildings, floors or zones and determine.
- Should we increase the presence of any office resources? Check if there are any resources that you need more of. Look at the bookings and utilization of rooms and desks and add some descriptive variables. Analyze which resources are overbooked and add more of those resources.
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