A breakdown of ROI from your workspace

In my line of work, I meet and greet a lot of facility managers, workspace heads, real estate managers, real estate developers, and smart city solution providers, - what is the common question that they all have?

What will be my ROI after deploying these sensors?

And I have to be honest it's not a simple explanation, I myself get baffled by the calculation sometimes.

So that's why I thought we'll explore the key ways occupancy sensors generate value for workplace teams and the key factors to consider when calculating the ROI from occupancy sensors.

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What are the different types of workspace sensors?

1. Environmental sensors: As the name suggests, environmental sensors monitor the environmental conditions of the office. This includes temperature, humidity, lighting, noise, and the indoor air quality of the office. Environmental data helps with workplace management, ensuring that the office is properly maintained for the best experience for your employees.?
2. Lighting sensors: They are devices that detect the amount of visible light from a surrounding or a light source. In this context, the measurement of light sensor output is lux. It is the term used to measure illuminance, in other words, the area where the luminous flux is spread.
3. Occupancy sensors : They are?desk or room sensors?that can be placed in, e.g., meeting rooms, cafeterias, phone booths or any other space at your workplace where you wish to measure utilization and follow occupancy levels.?
4. Desk Sensors: They?are a subset of occupancy monitoring sensors and are used to monitor desk occupancy in your office. There are a few types of office desk sensors, of which the most used desk sensors are based on passive infrared technology (PIR).

The different types of PIR sensors include:

• PIR, or passive infrared sensors: They are small, under-desk-mounted sensors aimed to monitor the usage and occupancy of the desk. Like other motion detection equipment, PIR sensors are triggered by motion and movement.
• Thermal sensors : They are ceiling-mounted sensors that detect body heat in the area and then use computer algorithms to determine the number of people in a specified space. These sensors together create a grid of the monitored area and visualize the occupancy in a heatmap-style image.?
• UWB and RFID-based systems: ?Tags are another way to track occupancy in your office. They require the users to carry a small transmitter, known as a tag, which can be, for example, integrated into the employees’ badge.?

5. Edge-intelligent sensor: People counting and footfall measuring sensors are a new type of sensor that processes the exact number of people in any given space in real-time at any time to give exact occupancy information. With a very high level of accuracy, organizations can effectively optimize their real estate with easy and greater data enrichment.

What are the benefits of using occupancy sensors?

1. Optimize your footprint:

Remove guesswork and right-size your workplace portfolio. When strategy is based on precise data, costs can be reduced without impacting workplace experience.

2. Future-proof workplace strategies

Transition from fixed to flexible working with confidence. Allocate space for teams based on verifiable utilization data and take an agile approach to workplace decision making.

3. Office health and safety

Guide the return to office armed with data. By monitoring room and floor occupancy, office capacity limits and targeted cleaning are covered.

4. Enhanced workspace experience

Every workplace and team is unique and so are their space needs. Identify and resolve office pain points and provide new, real-time space views to boost workplace experience.

First, let's talk about the cost of Adappt's occupancy sensors

Adappt's sensors cost just $0.012 per sq.ft per month to run, based on an average 20,000 sq.ft (5 floor) office prior to discounts for whole building or multi-location deployments being applied.

When looking at the cost consumed per unit our sensors have the lowest power consumption in a day close to 1.5watts/day

When we break that down- if we run Adappt's sensors for a whole month, that would come up to less than $10 a month for a single sensor which is less than 1/10th of the cost of an employee per square foot in a city like New York.

Naturally, not every office location bears the same costs as places like San Francisco, Sydney, or Singapore. Hence, it's wise to compare your monthly office operation costs and then contrast them with the typical monthly expense per sq.ft for space monitoring devices.

Calculating ROI from Occupancy Sensors

The value that occupancy sensors generate for a business can far outweigh this investment, however.

Explore five different ROI use cases below.

1. Improve workplace productivity The main goal of an office space is to cultivate an atmosphere where employees can optimize their efficiency. Yet, we understand that the actual experience in some office settings can be counterproductive.Challenges like:

• Struggling to find desks near colleagues or even finding a desk at all.
• Extended periods before securing meeting spaces.
• Disturbances due to calls and noise in open work areas.
• Absence of collaborative spaces equipped with whiteboards.
• Specific sections of the office with unreliable WIFI or unsuitable temperatures.

Cumulatively, these situations result in a workspace filled with obstacles, hindering individuals from performing their tasks effectively.

Adappt aids office management in pinpointing and addressing such hindrances.

For instance, addressing concerns like "Insufficient meeting areas," by delivering in-depth analytics about the active and underutilized sections of the office, as well as evaluating if there's a balance between the demand and availability of distinct spaces; such as "10% of workstations remain vacant, yet small conference areas are overbooked by 150%."

Utilizing the data and tailored space suggestions on Adappt's platform, office management can better cater to employees' needs and adapt the setting to boost overall efficiency.

DETERMINING ROI:

Collecting insights on the frequency of meetings and average room occupancy, Adappt's insights can deduce, for instance:

There's a need for 15 compact conference spaces, yet only 5 are present.

Big conference areas are mainly used by individuals for phone discussions.

Consequently, one of the organization's spacious conference rooms is repurposed into 5 smaller spaces.

This boosts the number of available small conference areas to 10, enhancing the efficiency of that section by 50%.

If conference zones constitute 40% or 1300 sq.ft of a standard 3500 sq.ft office level, we can leverage JLL's 3-30-300 rule to determine the ROI from the 50% uplift in that area's efficiency.

Single-level investment for Adappt's sensors: $6000

Anticipated efficiency enhancements from conference zones: $80k

ROI: 1225%.

Improve workplace experience

Global Human Capital Trends survey with 79% of survey respondents saying that fostering a sense of belonging in the workforce was important to their organization’s success in the next 12–18 months. 93% agreed that a sense of belonging drives organizational performance.

Despite employee engagement being viewed as positive company-wide, the majority of employees are disengaged at work. According to Gallup data, the overall percentage of engaged workers during 2022 is only 34%, down from 39% in 2021.?

Real-time occupancy sensors from Adappt not only boost the physical efficiency of an area but also offer a valuable tool for workplace groups to assess and consistently enhance the workplace ambience.

• Keep track of space occupancy and usage based on floors and team sectors; gauge the true progress of your office return strategy!
• Track movement patterns and identify behavioural tendencies concerning the length of stay.
• Examine the most frequented spaces by various teams and levels.
• Evaluate occupancy standards across teams to comprehend the importance of in-office teamwork on overall team output.

Thanks to Adappt's precise real-time data and its seamless integration with room reservation systems, employees can instantly locate an open desk, meeting room, or collaborative space. No need for manual check-ins, and any unattended bookings are swiftly identified, making the space available again.

Armed with comprehensive sensor data, workplace groups, HR specialists, and employee welfare experts can more effectively discern their staff's spatial needs, crafting a more pleasant and interactive office atmosphere.

DETERMINING ROI:

Sadly, there's no one-size-fits-all solution here. Typically, we collaborate with our customers to measure their own work environment's satisfaction and commitment levels. We then assess space occupancy and use over a defined period (like a year), determining if any adjustments in proportion, layout, or functionality, based on sensor insights, lead to increased use as seen by sensors and higher self-reported contentment levels from occupants.

1. Increase workplace portfolio efficiency?

Expanding teams and evolving business needs often demand more room!

But how can you be certain that you're optimizing your available space?

Adappt offers detailed occupancy information and sophisticated analysis through our AI and ML models to let you measure your real-time space use on any given floor or day, right down to specific desks or work areas. This information powers custom dashboards on future space use and team area equilibrium, allowing you to predict when certain floors and team sectors will be fully occupied.

By adopting a data-centric strategy for space and occupancy management, companies can prioritize enhancing the functionality and use of their current property before considering new premises or lease agreements.

DETERMINING ROI:

Let's say a leading tech firm with an office in the US houses 70 staff across a standard 16,000 sq.ft spread over 5 floors. As they anticipate team expansion, there's concern about running out of workspace.

Using the JLL 3-30-300 guideline, we deduce that the monthly operating costs for each floor amount to $90,000.

However, insights from Adappt indicate that the present layout can comfortably accommodate an extra 12 personnel without hindering efficiency. This data-backed assurance suggests that the firm can sustain its existing space for another year without the need for an extra floor.

Investment in Adappt: $25,000

Savings from postponing the lease of an additional floor for a year: $10,80,000

ROI: 50%

Note: Similarly, when pondering a sub-lease approach, Adappt's insights can bolster profitable real estate strategies.

1. De-risk real estate strategy?

Using the same data-centric approach for entire company property planning can considerably reduce uncertainties when making pivotal long-term decisions about leasing or purchasing commercial spaces. Instead of depending on a one-time observational analysis or a consultant's viewpoint, you can lean on your own firm's credible space utilization data to guide your choices.

Adappt not only optimizes the use of your existing premises but also aids in making forward-thinking savings.

DETERMINING ROI:

Would you allocate about 0.4% of your typical monthly workplace operational cost to mitigate risks associated with a major leasing or property acquisition move in a year?

1. Building a Connected Workplace Future

When evaluating the ROI of real-time occupancy sensors such as Adappt, it's essential to reflect on your overarching workplace infrastructure plan.

At present, global businesses are pivoting to accommodate the evolving needs of a post-pandemic working environment. Workers are gravitating towards a blend of traditional and flexible work models, necessitating a shift in standard office setups.

Envision a futuristic office powered by real-time data: instant area surveillance for security, seamless integration with HVAC systems and Building Management Systems (BMS), default video conferencing, interactive collaboration spaces replacing conventional desks, intelligent reservation platforms, and more.

A cutting-edge sensor platform like Adappt, which provides instantaneous occupancy insights across 500 ft of workspace with a positional precision of 98% every couple of seconds, is truly an investment in the real-time data infrastructure of your office.

With Adappt regularly rolling out novel features and syncing with modern workplace tech systems, its remote 'on-the-fly' update capability ensures that these sensors will consistently refine their precision and functionality, offering an expanding range of advantages for office management teams.

This becomes especially noteworthy when juxtaposing the ROI of a high-tech visual recognition system like Adappt's against dated PIR, Wi-Fi, or light-driven alternatives.

In conclusion

Your technology keeps changing, but your buildings don't. Why not?

In 2023, Real estate heads, architects, sustainability consultants, and facility managers cannot ignore the intelligent design that buildings have to adhere to if they want to make the employee experience and productivity at the centre of their organizations

If you have a need to optimize your spaces and get the best ROI for your data-driven space strategy contact us today!