Scheduling Chronicles

SaaS: No Offense to Capital Expense

Steve Banker recently outlined the differences in how hardware and software are expensed.  He put hardware in the context of a vehicle where over time, the value depreciated to a point where it is more economically viable to sell or repurpose it.  In some instances of software, the same thing can happen.  While an initial software purchase can provide near-immediate value (which is should), especially when rolling out a new initiative such as alternative workspace that affects many areas of the organization, how does that value change when factoring in maintenance costs, additional feature requirements, and the cost (in time, energy, and money) of upgrading the system.

What I found most interesting is that even when going through the cost/benefit analysis of software purchases, the conclusion is that software-as-a-service is the preferred method of software delivery.  Why?  First and foremost, there are no capital expenses associated with SaaS so any on-demand purchases doesn't affect the balance sheet. Further, the costs of upgrading is minimal - if any - because those costs are included in the agreement.  And as Banker contends, "From a budgeting perspective, this strikes me as much cleaner." 

Capturing Actual Utilization of Space Webinar

PeopleCube will be conducting a series of webinars focusing on the topic of capturing the actual utilization of space.  These webinars are driven by the need for corporate real estate executives, human resource executives, facilities managers and others to identify more than simply how their shared workspace, conference rooms and other real estate are being scheduled but rather if they are actually being used. 

More companies are mandating cost reductions and because real estate is typically an organizations largest expense after payroll, that has become a target area.  The challenge has long been "how can I reduce my real estate costs if I don't know how that space is being used?"  In fact it is not uncommon for companies to think they need to expand their real estate overhead because people within the organization claim conference rooms are constantly booked or alternative workspace is typically unavailable. 

These webinars are designed to showcase the value of understanding the true utilization of real estate. Using the right real estate scheduling, occupancy detection, and utilization analysis tools, attendees will learn not only how to avoid making unnecessary real estate acquisitions, but maximize the full value of the real estate you already have. It is now easy to capture actual utilization of space.  

Titled Capturing Actual Utilization of Space: Uncovering the "Holy Grail" of Real Estate Management, these webinars are currently scheduled for November 4th at 11:00 am EST and November 10th at 2:00 pm EST.  For more information or to register, visit http://www.peoplecube.com/live-capturing-actual-use-space-webinar-registration.htm.

PeopleCube and CountWise Join Forces to Deliver Innovative Tool for Tracking Actual Utilization of Workspace

PeopleCube today announced that they have formed a partnership to deliver a real-estate management and measurement solution called PeopleCounter.

PeopleCounter enables customers to schedule shared workspace and other corporate assets, track actual utilization of that space with the CountWise Video Imaging/Shape Recognition technology, and measure and analyze the resulting data to discover actual versus planned space utilization. By implementing PeopleCounter, customers are able to understand how real estate is being utilized in order to make educated, cost-saving decisions regarding their real-estate overhead.

The PeopleCounter solution utilizes the I-Count™ people-counting technology from CountWise. With greater than 95% accuracy, this stand-alone video based counting system is the most accurate and dependable product available worldwide. I-Count delivers multi-zone, bi-directional pedestrian traffic counting by combining shape recognition and motion detection in a robust and affordable product.

PeopleCounter integrates I-Count with PeopleCube’s alternative workspace and resource management solution, Resource Scheduler, and Workplace BI, the industry’s first workspace business intelligence tool for tracking and analyzing real-estate utilization. Customers first use Resource Scheduler to schedule shared workspace and other corporate assets, then I-Count automatically tracks the number of people entering and exiting the scheduled space. The people-counting information is then fed into Workplace BI, where the data is analyzed and measured.

The end result is more than just data, but rather valuable, actionable real-estate utilization information that enables customers, for the first time, to track and analyze not just planned real estate utilization, but actual real estate utilization. It’s this actual utilization information that makes it possible for customers to make educated decisions on how to effectively manage their real estate portfolio.

Check it out at http://www.peoplecube.com/products-peoplecounter.htm.

Bentley University Selects PeopleCube’s Resource Scheduler To Manage Group Study Rooms in Renovated High-Tech Library

PeopleCube recently announced that Bentley University has chosen the Resource Scheduler intelligent workspace management solution to manage and maximize the utilization of group study rooms in its library, which recently underwent a $17 million renovation to make it one of the most high-tech libraries on any US college campus.

Bentley will use Resource Scheduler in conjunction with Steelcase’s RoomWizard display technology to enable students to view room scheduling information on line and to book rooms either on site or remotely, at any time—without having to rely on library staff to manage and monitor room scheduling and use.

“The goal of our renovation project was to create a hub of academic life that reflected Bentley’s stature in technology, research, and campus life,” said Phillip Knutel, PhD, executive director of academic technology, the library, and online learning, who headed the renovation project. “We’ll use Resource Scheduler to enhance student collaboration and to maximize room occupancy by ensuring that groups are using study rooms, rather than allowing a handful of individual students to monopolize them.”

The new scheduling system is expected to dramatically increase the use of shared study rooms, while enabling Bentley to actually reduce the energy required to heat and cool the rooms. The integrated system will also support environmental conservation by eliminating paper-based scheduling.

PeopleCube Launches Workspace Utilization Analysis Services To Help Organizations Maximize Real-Estate Utilization

PeopleCube today announced Workplace Utilization Analysis Services, a new consulting service designed to help organizations maximize real-estate utilization and organizational efficiency by leveraging detailed analysis of workspace utilization data. This service gives companies valuable insight into how their real estate is being leveraged and enables them to make educated decisions on how to best manage their shared corporate assets so that they can reduce costs and enhance operational efficiency.

“With real estate typically being the second largest corporate expense after personnel, the importance of understanding how space is being used cannot be overstated,” said Carolyn Urban, vice president of services and support at PeopleCube. “There’s a huge difference between the actual use of space versus the planned use of space, and understanding that difference can help prevent the unnecessary acquisition or expansion of real-estate assets. Our Workplace Utilization Analysis Services arms companies with not just the data, but the analysis of that data to help them make educated decisions on future real-estate needs based on utilization trending and other valuable analysis.”

PeopleCube’s Workspace Utilization Analysis Service is a unique offering that converts real-estate utilization data into actionable information. By combining real-estate management data, business-intelligence data, and the expertise of PeopleCube’s real-estate utilization analysis professionals, customers are presented with a thorough analysis of usage trends and valuable insight into how they can enhance operational efficiency. The analysis and recommendations provided by PeopleCube’s professional services consultants, when leveraged properly, can help clients save thousands—if not millions—of dollars in real estate and other operational costs.

To learn more about Workspace Utilization Analysis Services, click here.

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.

PeopleCube Launches Workplace BI

Today PeopleCube announced Workplace BI, the industry’s first business intelligence tool that enables organizations to effectively monitor, measure, and manage utilization of real estate to maximize value and reduce overhead. Workplace BI enables organizations to gain an accurate view of both current and future real-estate needs, potentially enabling corporations to save millions of dollars in direct operating costs within their real-estate portfolio.

“Real estate is the second largest cost for most organizations, so companies are looking to make the best use of the space they have and to divest under-performing real-estate assets,” said Jeffrey R. Roof, vice president of product management for PeopleCube. “PeopleCube’s Workplace BI enables everyone from top management to hands-on project managers to gain insight into actual real-estate utilization and to predict future needs. This helps customers attain their space-related goals, whether that means divesting unneeded space, implementing alternative workspace programs to promote efficient utilization of office space, or accommodating growth without expanding their real-estate footprint.”

Look to the Future, Not Just the Past
Traditional reporting tracks only events that have already happened, whereas the PeopleCube Workplace BI solution enables companies to understand how their space and assets are being used currently and in the future. It provides the trending information management needs to make adjustments based on projections of usage and requirements in order to defray unnecessary expenses down the road.

Measure to Manage
Facility management systems track data on space usage (for example, assigned or vacant), maintenance utilities, and cost allocation. Data about alternative workspace, meeting rooms, and videoconferencing services resides in the resource management system. Yet another system contains data on actual utilization (e.g., visitors, presence detection, and energy usage).

Only when data is extracted from these various systems and transformed into useful information can it be used for tracking, measuring, problem detection, analysis, and planning. As the information is evaluated, trends emerge, and management can refine processes based on organizational needs or external impacts on the company facilities.

PeopleCube’s Workplace BI aggregates data from various enterprise systems and transform it into information that enables customers to measure actual utilization against plan, institute continuous process improvement, and achieve effective utilization of space.

Accurate Utilization of Space
“When an organization has the right amount of space to meet the needs of the user community, we call this accurate utilization of space,” said Roof. “As more organizations deploy alternative workspace programs, such as hoteling, accurate utilization of space is more difficult to determine.”

In the past, most real estate was assigned and allocated to a department within the organization based on industry standards. Today, a large percentage of space is available on a first come, first served basis for use by multiple departments. In this type of environment, getting an accurate picture of how space is being utilized can be difficult. When an organization looks at planned use via reservations, and not actual use (taking into consideration drop-ins, no-shows, etc.) the result is a false view of the actual utilization of space. This leads to inaccurate planning when developing new alternative workspace at other locations. By combining data from multiple systems, such as reservations, building access, and network access within Workplace BI, a more accurate view of actual utilization can be seen, resulting in more precise future planning.

The Right Information for Each Role
People filling various roles within an organization have to look at the same data in different ways to carry out their own particular mission. PeopleCube’s Workplace BI provides a variety of views of information and makes it possible for those who require more granularity to easily drill down into details—without having to run multiple reports to narrow in on what they need.

For example, CEOs take a high-level, forward-looking enterprisewide view. They look for trends in performance, compare the performance of one corporate facility with another, and benchmark the entire company against others in the industry.

A corporate real-estate vice president for a large organization, who might be in charge of managing millions of square feet of space, would look for opportunities to reduce square footage: even as little as a two-percent reduction would mean dropping hundreds of thousands of square feet of space. In locations such as New York or Chicago, that would add up to major cost savings.

Facility managers, in contrast, need a more granular view. They might look at enterprisewide usage of conference rooms, then drill down by division and location to see how efficiently conference-room space is actually being used at specific locations.

Project managers are focused on their own particular mission. Someone in charge of an alternative workspace initiative might use Workplace BI to review a flexible work program at one location and analyze its effectiveness before rolling it out to other divisions. To see how the initiative is executing compared to plan, they would review user adoption trends, check-in and check-out procedures, workspace preferences, utilization by department and time of day, and similar information.

About Workplace BI
Workplace BI is the first business intelligence tool for real-estate executives and other space-management personnel looking to maximize real-estate space and asset utilization throughout the organization. Designed to integrate with other enterprise data repository applications, Workplace BI provides valuable data analysis and trending information that enables organizations to actively manage current and future real-estate utilization to reduce costly overhead. For more information about Workplace BI, visit www.peoplecube.com/products-workplacebi.htm.

Controling Energy Costs in a Tough Economy

I am a firm believer that a tough economy creates challenges for some but opportunity for others.  Unfortunately many companies today are finding it hard to reduce costs without having layoffs.  But what amazes me is that desite these cases of mass layoffs, many organizations aren't changing their operations.  Conisder this fact I uncovered in a recent Industry Week article titled Take Action or Energy Cost Will Soar as You Reduce Production:

"Many factories are scaling back production and experiencing remarkable increases in the energy component of conversion cost. The cause is clear and preventable. You can avoid this pitfall by taking immediate action to reduce the fixed component of your energy consumption. This is a common opportunity (and problem).

"Failing to take action caused a dramatic increase in energy per unit of production at a large Chicago-based operation last fall. Within that production facility, a 65% reduction in output resulted in only a 10% reduction in energy usage; just 10%! That small reduction in energy, paired with the large reduction in production, resulted in a 257% increase in energy per unit of production."

There is no doubt production loss will affect the botton line but this is also an example of a situation where, if production and workforce is reduced, there is an opportunity for further reductions in energy costs.  For example, if the HVAC system were tied to an automated scheduling application, the heating and cooling of a location could be adjusted quickly and easily based on when the workforce is actually at work. 

Let's take this one step further.  By tracking the utilization of the available workspace, companies are able to consolidate workspace into a specific heating zone and could then "hibernate" the other available space.  This eliminates the need to heat or cool unoccupied space, making it only available when the size of the workforce on-site dictates it, heling to significantly reduce unneccessary energy costs. 

This is just one of the many examples of how companies can turn a bad situation into - well, one that isn't as bad as it could be.  The above mentioned article points to a number of potential energy saving examples and while many of the examples in the article refer to plan production, they actually translate quite well to any work environment.  But regardless of the industry, the message is the same.  A change in work environments should cause companies to look into altnernative workspace or HVAC integration with scheduling software as innovative ways to save money.  Sure, times are tough but there are opportunities to reduce costs though efficiency using wokrplace business intelligence - as long as you're willing to leave no stone unturned to find the right solution for your work environment.

Identifying the Keys to a Green Corporate Strategy

I found an interested article the other day in Environmental Leader written by Rich Lechner, VP of Environment and Energy at IBM titled "The Seven Pillars of a Green Corporate Strategy."  The article rang true to me because his messages are very similar to the ones I espouse.  In essence, the bottom line (pun intended I suppose) is the green strategy your organization implements must include a strong cost saving component as well.  We all want to be environmentally sound but any corporation must ask "at what cost?"  As Lechner points out "$1 in energy savings can often drive an additional $6 to $8 in operational savings."  And the reasons are (relatively) simple: If you are able to reduce your energy consumption, aren't you, by default, reducing your energy costs?

Lechner identifies his seven "pillars" of the corporate green strategy as:

• Strategy: Creating an environmental strategy as part of a larger corporate social responsibility initiative can produce beneficial financial and environmental results.
• People: Implementing alternative workspace, providing more online collaboration tools and creating other environmentally-friendly work environments can help attract and retain top talent.
• Information:As we like to say here at PeopleCube, you can't manage what you can't measure.  Knowing how to maximize utilization of shared resources, workspace, and other mission-critical areas of your business can help you better manage costs today - and tomorrow.
• Products: By understanding the environmental impact of their products enable companies to adjust their manufacturing processes.  Further, companies can leverage new technology that provides greater energy consumption intelligence.
• Information Technology:Reviewing the energy consumption of IT related resources can surprise many people.  In fact, some companies are turning to software-as-a-service (SaaS) as a way to reduce costs and carbon emissions of their IT infrastructure.
• Property: By leveraging technology to understand carbon emissions and real estate utilization, you're able to make adjustments to reduce real estate and energy costs. 
• Business Operations: Similar to above.  Organizations need to change their operations processes to reduce costs and carbon footprint.  But in order to do so, you first need to track, measure and analyze existing use and compare it against targeted environmental benchmarks.

As Lechner indicated, going green isn't as difficult or as costly as you might think.  With the right approach, the right planning, and the right technology, you can quickly and easily be on your way to greener bottom line - in more ways than one.

Growth of Digital Signage Market Set for 2009

The US digital signage market is expected to grow more than 33% in 2009 over 2008 revenues of $700 million.  That's the latest in a report from Zippy Aima of research firm ABI Research.  As Michelle Masterson of ChannelWeb reports, the growth will likely be seen in tlaw enforcement and government in addition to the more traditional markets such as retail, education and hospitality.

This growth is due in large part to the shift from standard advertising that many feel has become too "static" and broad in appeal."  Another factor that is making digital signage more attractive is the reduction in the price of screens as well as the movement towards a software-as-a-service model for many vendors which provides customers with greater flexibility from a functionality and cost standpoint.