Scheduling Chronicles

PeopleCube Offers Three Webinars on Real-Estate Measurement, Management, Forecasting, and Cost Savings

PeopleCube today announced that it is extending its ongoing webinar series with the addition of three programs that will run throughout the month of July. All of the webinars focus on effectively utilizing real estate and minimizing associated costs. They are free of charge.

“Given the state of the economy—and recognizing that real estate is the second-largest cost (after labor) for most organizations—it’s more important than ever for companies to gain an accurate view of current and future real-estate needs, so that they can avoid unnecessary expenditures,” said Rick Boyink, vice president of North America for PeopleCube. “Our complimentary webinars give facility managers and real-estate executives insight into determining how their space and assets are being used now and enable them to predict future needs, potentially saving thousands—even millions—of dollars in direct operating costs within their real-estate portfolio.”

The three new webinars are “Leveraging Alternative Workspace Strategies to Reduce Costs,” “How to Capture Actual Use of Space,” and “Workplace Business Intelligence: Better Real-Estate Management Begins with Better Real-Estate Measurement.” Sessions are available throughout the month, and attendees may select the dates they prefer when registering at PeopleCube’s Resource Center. Visitors to the Resource Center will also find complimentary white papers, case studies, and on-demand workshops.

Measuring, Managing, Predicting, and Saving on Real Estate
 Descriptions of the three new webinars are as follows.

“Leveraging Alternative Workspace Strategies to Reduce Costs”—Participants will learn how to reduce real-estate costs using alternative workspace (office hoteling) software. Examples will be given of customers who are using resource scheduling software to reduce real-estate overhead, improve utilization of shared workspace, lessen energy consumption and costs, and implement or support green initiatives. The webinar will also describe how customers can promote a telecommuting environment and accommodate a mobile workforce, two examples of flexible work programs that increase employee satisfaction and enhance an organization’s ability to acquire and retain talent.

“How to Capture Actual Use of Space”—Designed for facility management and real-estate mangers and executives, this webinar will present different ways that organizations can capture actual usage of space and report on the information that is captured. Determining actual usage of space enables companies to make meaningful real-estate decisions that can lead to significant cost savings.

“Workplace Business Intelligence: Better Real-Estate Management Begins with Better Real-Estate Measurement”—Real estate is typically the second largest expense after labor, and yet it is often one of the most overlooked assets within an organization’s portfolio. Knowing how real-estate space and related assets are being used today—and how they will be used tomorrow—can save organizations thousands, even millions, of dollars. This session will present how workplace business intelligence (BI) can be leveraged by organizations to maximize real-estate space and asset utilization.

Business Intelligence Market Continues Growth

Market research firm IDC recently issued their report on their busienss intelligence vendors.  The leaders in the space are, not surprisingly, SAP BusinessObjective, SAS, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft.  Interestingly, while the top ten vendors make up 70% of the market, there continues to be accelerated growth from other smaller vendors as well.  And why not?  According to the report, the BI tools markets grew 10.6% to $7.8 billion globally. 

IDC sees the BI market comprised of two primary areas: QRA tools and advanced analytics.  Interestingly IDC claims the analytics component is lagging.  Interesting because that's exactly what PeopleCube's Workplace BI application does - it analyzes real estate utilization to assist companies in reducing their real estate and operational costs.  And while they aren't one of the top ten vendors worldwide, with the expected continued growth in the market, there will be many more companies like PeopleCube who understand that business intelligence is a valuable commodity that successful businesses need to leverage.

PeopleCube Integrates Resource Scheduler with TANDBERG Management Suite

PeopleCube today announced it has successfully integrated its Resource Scheduler scheduling software solution with TANDBERG Management Suite (TMS) to provide a complete video and telepresence scheduling solution. By using an application programming interface (API) from both companies to integrate the two solutions, PeopleCube has been able to provide a leading healthcare insurance customer with an innovative video conferencing scheduling solution designed to improve productivity and enhance operational efficiency.

“One of the primary reasons that any company implements a video conferencing solution is to improve collaboration without the financial and environmental cost of airline or vehicular travel,” said PeopleCube president and CEO John T. Anderson. “When the video conferencing equipment and related resources aren’t managed or scheduled properly, or require a user to schedule the items in multiple systems, the efficiency that the equipment is intended to provide declines. By integrating with the Tandberg Management Suite, we are able to simplify the scheduling of that equipment and corresponding conference rooms with a single integrated scheduling system, helping customers to realize the full value of their video conferencing implementation.”

The integration of Resource Scheduler with TMS has enabled one of the leading medical insurance companies in the United States reduce inefficiencies in its management of shared video conferencing equipment and other corporate assets. Previously, users had to reserve video conferencing equipment in one system and conference room(s) where that equipment resides in another. With this integrated system, customers are able to search for and reserve available video conferencing equipment, meeting rooms, and other assets all from within the Resource Scheduler scheduling environment. As a result, customers are able to eliminate scheduling conflicts, improve utilization of assets, and enhance overall productivity and efficiency.

To learn more about PeopleCube's resource management or other alternative workspace solutions, visit www.peoplecube.com.

SaaS Business Intelligence: a Smart Decision

The growth in SaaS over the past several years is largely attributed to the simplistic automation of CRM, expense management, human resources, and Web analytic applications.  However, business intelligence is quickly becoming another focal point for SaaS vendors, and who can blame them.

Business intelligence is one of the most overlooked yet important component to running a successful business.  Until recently, the notion of business intelligence was simply the idea of capturing data and then sifting through that data to make some sense of it all.  However, vendors such as PeopleCube are taking business intelligence to a new level.  In their case, workplace business intelligence is intended to help companies reduce their real estate and other operation costs.  How?  By automating the collection of space utilization data, analyzing that data, and providing actionable information that allows companies to make educated decisions on how to maximize the value of their real estate.

As a recent article in InformationWeek outlines, business intelligence SaaS is gaining in popularity because "you can feed data into BI to get results without diving into a spaghetti tangle of issues related to SaaS and on-premise software systems."  And it's true.  Because the data needed to provide the "intelligence" component of business intelligence is contained in a hosted environment, accessing and processing that data is quick, easy, and relatively painless.  In the case of PeopleCube, customers leverage their Resource Scheduler on demand application to schedule conference rooms, alternative workspace, and other corporate assets.  Because they host the application, it is quite simple for PeopleCube or any hosting company to extract that data into a business intelligence application (which is usually the most difficult component of this process) such as their Workplace BI because, if for no other reason, it's the data from their own application.  From there the data can be analyzed quickly and easily with near-immediate results - and it's those results that proves the real value of BI.

Business intelligence SaaS is here to stay.  But what we do with that intelligence is what makes the difference.