As hybrid work fashions proceed to evolve, organizations are navigating advanced challenges, from optimizing house utilization and enhancing worker expertise to effectively sustaining services and assembly regulatory objectives. Eptura’s Flex/24 occasions offered a beneficial platform for leaders throughout numerous industries, together with banking, tech, and authorities, to share greatest practices and focus on upcoming tendencies and improvements.
Held in 9 main cities — Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Mountain View, London, Singapore, Canberra, Melbourne, and Washington, DC — from March by way of July 2024, the occasions introduced collectively over 400 professionals from world enterprises. Attendees gained actionable insights and sensible steerage on leveraging worktech to drive success and handle services extra effectively, fostering significant connections and exchanging concepts to empower change and innovation of their workplaces.
Core tendencies supported by Eptura analysis
The 2024 Office Index report, a compass for navigating the altering world of labor primarily based on information from Eptura’s worktech platform, fueled the inspiring discussions at Flex/24.
The index findings, which confirmed operational leaders prioritizing worktech investments in information analytics and platform integration to create collaborative, sustainable, and environment friendly workplaces, have been strengthened by audio system and attendees.
Many attendees shared challenges in efficiently bringing their groups again to the workplace, and insights from Eptura’s analysis and greatest practices from audio system empowered them with new methods to “magnetize” their workplaces utilizing built-in worktech options.
Connecting information by unifying operational expertise
One other key theme of Flex/24 was exploring methods to handle information gaps inside the constructing life cycle. By means of a strategic alliance, Eptura and Autodesk are enabling organizations to simply leverage wealthy datasets from the design part instantly inside constructing operations techniques. Autodesk audio system throughout the Flex/24 occasions globally shared how companies are seamlessly integrating constructing info modeling (BIM) information into facility administration techniques to optimize how their buildings function.
Know-how continues to play a key position in revolutionizing the office. At Flex/24 New York, Citrin Cooperman Director of Data Know-how Jed Balido coated the important thing influences to trace, together with generative AI, cloud computing, info safety, automation, and grasp information administration.
Andrew Lim, Analysis Director at JLL, highlighted {that a} staggering 92% of corporations see worktech as a key driver of aggressive benefit. But the Office Index analysis reveals a spot between this ambition and actuality. Whereas 50% of companies are embracing built-in worktech platforms, many are nonetheless navigating the early levels of digital transformation.
Attendees worldwide expressed a rising must transition from managing hybrid work preparations to harnessing information and expertise for strategic benefit. To attain this, they’re more and more standardizing their information and consolidating fragmented techniques.
This sentiment was echoed by JLL’s Thomas Mackean at Flex/24 Singapore, who described a rising demand for sensible buildings. This journey, he defined, begins with fundamental instruments like spreadsheets and evolves into subtle AI-driven techniques, demonstrating the business’s ongoing evolution.
In Washington, DC, Flex/24 introduced office and facility leaders from U.S. authorities companies collectively to listen to how federal staff are making use of tech within the constructed setting.
An infrastructure chief who manages protection belongings defined that their company is shifting away from overly personalized techniques, which at the moment take as much as 18 months to improve due to their complexity. As an alternative, they plan to make use of extra configurable instruments to streamline their processes. His suggestion for profitable tech implementation is to achieve alignment throughout operations and IT, talk transparently, and set sturdy governance.
A listing supervisor at heath care centered company shared how they use Archibus to know their house stock and determine inefficiencies to repurpose underutilized areas into affected person care areas.
Federal companies in attendance additionally indicated extra openness to embracing the Federal Danger and Authorization Administration Program (FedRAMP) when deciding on cloud answer suppliers. FedRAMP promotes the adoption of safe cloud applied sciences, guaranteeing the safety of federal info and enhancing their use of configurable choices to enhance safety.
Making a frictionless worker expertise
Of the 400+ attendees on the Flex/24 occasions, many conversations revolved round a central query: How can we get folks again into the workplace? Atlanta speaker Derek Goshay, VP Security & Sustainability at Real Elements Firm, shared the cultural shifts which have taken place all through the return-to-office course of as they adopted a Google-inspired campus method. Qualcomm Senior Supervisor of Services Planning Michael Ippolito shared in Silicon Valley that occupancy tendencies differ for his or her enterprise throughout world areas, with APAC main on in-office attendance.
The truth is, the 2024 Office Index report revealed a major year-on-year enhance in workspace reserving: 27% within the Americas, 52% in APAC, and 31% in EMEA. Whereas this information signifies a constructive attendance development, it additionally underscores the necessity for built-in expertise to streamline operations. John Hilderbrands, Eptura’s VP of Options Engineering, said at Flex/24 London that “reserving is just not a aim, however a superfluous motion that helps obtain an final result [like collaboration] and permits folks to work the way in which they wish to work.” To facilitate a extra seamless in-office expertise, enterprises are leveraging expertise like Eptura’s automated check-in performance which makes use of AI to alleviate the necessity for workers to find the correct sort of workspace.
In Chicago, Drew DePriest, McKesson’s Director of Actual Property Operations Know-how, beneficial beginning with the query: What tech is essential to the enterprise? For him, it’s the flexibility to collaborate asynchronously and for enterprise continuity. The aim of tech within the office can be to change into extra anticipatory — one thing enterprises can change into stronger at when empowered with complete information. This dialog contributes to the overarching theme of utilizing information to foretell tendencies in workplace utilization and to take away obstacles to a collaborative worker setting — core capabilities that Eptura allows.
Hitting sustainability targets with tech
Sustainability was a serious focus for attendees in any respect Flex/24 occasions. A primary instance is Royal London’s workplace transfer, led by Office Design Supervisor Graeme Roberts, the place they prioritized furnishings reuse and saved a outstanding 44 tons of CO₂ by diverting waste from landfills.
Fabrice Martin, Eptura’s Chief Product Officer, emphasised the large alternative for companies to make use of sustainability and inexperienced constructing administration instruments to hit their targets, comparable to waste discount and decreasing their carbon footprint. Since almost 40% of the world’s carbon emissions originate from buildings, leaders can leverage information generated by built-in expertise to realize sustainability objectives. This may be achieved by figuring out alternatives to optimize house utilization and modernizing facility upkeep processes.
Tim Rijnders of sensor supplier VergeSense echoed this on the APAC occasions, stating that “the impacts of unused house on ESG are vital. Buildings are liable for 37% of worldwide carbon emissions and 34% of power demand. Optimizing our footprint is among the best methods to contribute [to ESG efforts].” He additionally harassed the necessity to match workspace structure with worker habits through the use of information insights to create one of the best working setting.
These potentialities and insights have been essential contemplating most audio system stated that reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 was an enormous focus for the long run, together with McKesson’s Drew DePriest. Drew talked about at Flex/24 Chicago McKesson’s aim to succeed in a 50% discount in carbon emissions by 2032.
The New York occasion noticed in-depth discussions about Native Legislation 97 — an bold municipal program for decreasing constructing carbon emissions. JLL shared that they’re actively engaged in understanding this laws’s affect on tenants and property homeowners, in addition to the corresponding tips and penalties enforced by companies till 2040. The laws may even affect the New York Metropolis Division of Citywide Administrative Providers, whose IT Enterprise Help Director Clara Gomez shared how they handle and lease public buildings all through the town. These examples spotlight the rising urgency for companies to implement sustainable practices, and to combine the suitable expertise to realize this as seamlessly as doable.
Rooms full of leaders dedicated to alter
Flex/24 fostered essential conversations about making operations simpler, bettering the worker expertise, and assembly environmental objectives. Our discussions with business leaders spotlight the transformative potential of built-in worktech options. Collectively, we will construct workplaces that aren’t simply environment friendly, but in addition inspiring.
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By Gabi Bellairs-Lombard
Gabi is a London-based author with 8 years of expertise in copywriting and technique throughout numerous verticals. She has been immersed in tech for 2 years, beforehand writing for a fintech firm. Her specialities lie in long- and short-form writing, website positioning writing and technique, and market analysis. In her present position at Eptura, she covers the most recent worktech and office expertise tendencies.