In today's dynamic business environment, efficient workspace utilization has become a critical factor in driving productivity and employee satisfaction. As companies strive to optimize their office layouts, spatial utilization analytics have emerged as a game-changing tool for property managers and workplace planning professionals.
Traditionally, the data gathered to inform these analytics has come from sensors, special devices designed to monitor the occupancy of spaces by doing a headcount. However, newer Wi-Fi based technologies are making headway, providing more nuanced insights that offer a clearer picture of how people are behaving and interacting in their spaces.
To truly understand the power of Wi-Fi based spatial analytics, it helps to hear it from an expert with practical experience. In this informative series of videos, Founder and CEO of InnerSpace, James Wu, cites real-world use cases and strategies to explain just how Wi-Fi based spatial analytics can transform your workspace, offering deeper insights and greater efficiency than traditional sensor-based solutions.
What are spatial utilization analytics, and why are they important?
Spatial utilization analytics offer insights about how different types of spaces within a workplace are being used by the people who are supposed to benefit from them – important information to have when evaluating the value and effectiveness of your real estate investment.
“It’s objective data to understand how [space is] being used such that the changes that you make can be measured, to see whether or not they have improved things… whether or not you're achieving the goals that it is intended to achieve, meaning supporting your staff in terms of being productive and being effective and collaborating.”
How are Wi-Fi-based utilization analytics different from traditional sensor-based occupancy analytic solutions?
Wi-Fi based solutions and sensor-based solutions differ in terms of ease of deployment and the types of data they are tracking and collecting.
“Wi-Fi has a much broader capability for collecting data that goes beyond just counting people.”
How do space utilization analytics help us understand behavior?
Just as understanding your bank balance is an important – but incomplete – metric to use for financial planning, occupancy alone is too simplistic a measurement for good space planning.
“What you wanna be able to understand is when people come, how often are they coming back, how long are they staying in certain areas, and where are they going?”
What is Predictive Hyperbolic Localization Fingerprinting (PHLF)?
The team at InnerSpace have invented Predictive Hyperbolic Localization Fingerprinting (PHLF), a new, proprietary technology that uses the presence of stationary connected devices, like printers and photocopiers, to get more accurate readings of where people are in space.
“With PHLF, you can figure that out within about two meters.”
What makes PHLF “predictive”?
When a person occupies a space, their presence disrupts the Wi-Fi signals in that space in a very specific way, creating a signature or “fingerprint” pattern. InnerSpace’s PHLF technology tracks and analyzes these Wi-Fi signal patterns to predict when someone is occupying a specific area of space.
"The next time I see that exact or very similar looking fingerprint to what I measured… I can predict with high accuracy that I'm probably in that square meter.”
How do Wi-Fi based solutions provide more data than occupancy counts?
James describes a real-world instance of how, unlike traditional sensor-based data, Wi-Fi based data adds “color” to baseline occupancy data to uncover crucial insights about why inefficiencies in space utilization occur.
“It's that extra layer of color that allowed them to identify the actual problem that needed solving versus just kind of putting a bandage on the symptom.”
How do Wi-Fi based analytics maintain priority without affecting network performance?
Wi-Fi based analytics have minimal impact on network performance, occupying a trivial amount of bandwidth compared to the total volume of traffic that most wireless networks handle on a daily basis. And as a critical piece of infrastructure, Wi-Fi is always a top priority in terms of being a reliable source of data with little downtime.
“You don't log tickets when your enterprise Wi-Fi is down. It just gets fixed.”
Why is InnerSpace’s Wi-Fi based solution so cost effective?
Leveraging your existing Wi-Fi infrastructure – instead of occupancy sensors that require additional installation and maintenance – making it much less expensive to deploy. In our case, using PHLF technology means you get incredible accuracy without significant investment (in both time and money) and maintenance of sensors.
“If you can use an existing infrastructure, you don't have any additional hardware to install.”
How can companies leverage Wi-Fi based utilization data?
There are many applications for the insights generated by Wi-Fi based utilization data, from building management and sustainability enhancements to creating hybrid work models that improve the employee experience and motivate workers to return to the office.
“You have to make them want to come back to the workplace. You have to provide to them a set of resources… that convinces them that their workday is better spent in the office more often than not.”
How does InnerSpace handle concerns about privacy and security?
InnerSpace technology is GDPR compliant and ISO and SOC2 certified. Our solution uses the unique identifiers in mobile phones to track an individual’s movements but that information is immediately encrypted and hashed so that the person the phone belongs to can’t be identified, even with reverse engineering.
“In the event of some kind of security breach… the information… isn't even stored in a system like ours, so it can never get out and can never be used to identify what somebody did.”
How scalable is InnerSpace’s Wi-Fi based solution compared to sensor-based solutions?
Because InnerSpace’s solution leverages a company’s existing Wi-Fi infrastructure and does not require the installation of sensors or other hardware, it is much easier to deploy and scale compared to sensor-based solutions. As a result, it’s also much more cost effective.
“Deploying sensors is infinitely more expensive than not deploying sensors… A Wi-Fi based solution like ours can be deployed at scale at less than half the cost.”
What’s a real-world example of Wi-Fi based space utilization analytics providing more valuable answers?
A client who had relied solely on badge swipe data had to reassess the success of their return-to-office program once InnerSpace’s Wi-Fi based analytics provided more granular insights.
“They were going and… having a conversation with their colleagues at lunch, and then they were going home to keep working… The simplistic data could lead people to believe that RTO was successful. The more fulsome data revealed that it was not.”
How will Wi-Fi based space utilization technology evolve over the next few years?
By working directly with clients and their specific needs, we are continuously uncovering new applications for InnerSpace’s broad dataset that we had not previously imagined. It is exciting to think about all of the opportunities for improvement this rich data can create as our clients share their challenges and the real estate and workplace planning industry evolves over time.
“I don't know that we know all the ways in which the data we are able to deliver to customers can be used to affect change in their space… and it's super exciting to think about, ‘What are the different ways in which this can be used?"
How can a company add Wi-Fi based space utilization solutions to their network?
It’s easy to integrate our Wi-Fi based space utilization solutions into your existing Wi-Fi and sensor infrastructure. There’s no need for additional hardware, nor to prioritize coverage, which means you are up and running and collecting space utilization insights in 24 hours.
“You can use the Wi-Fi data to be strategic and thoughtful about how to deploy sensors in a way that is going to maximize their benefit without having to blanket a space with sensors at exceptionally high cost.”
Wi-Fi based spatial analytics offer deeper insights and cost savings compared to traditional sensors. Optimize your workspace with detailed occupancy and movement data.
Contact us and talk with one of our experts today to see the benefits in action!
